Below, my InvestorPlace colleague Luke Lango digs into how this dynamic is beginning to take shape in the AI buildout, and why the next phase may reward investors who look beyond software and mega-cap platforms to the physical and structural backbone of the AI economy. It’s a timely framework as we move deeper into 2026.

Luke further expands on these ideas in a free Genesis Mission broadcast for investors who want a closer look at what’s coming next. You can check that out here.

***

In the early 1940s, Americans couldn’t explain why obscure chemical firms were suddenly flush with cash or why Washington cared about desert towns in New Mexico.

And in the early 1960s, few investors understood why the government was pouring billions into rockets, primitive computers, and aerospace firms most people had never heard of.

But a small group did understand. They recognized the signs of a national mobilization, positioned early, and reshaped their wealth.

That same pattern is unfolding again today.

Most investors are trying to play 2026 with a 2019 rulebook. That world is gone. The era of frictionless globalism is over.

We’ve entered a new phase where the U.S. government isn’t just regulating markets… it’s fast-tracking permits, steering contracts, and funding critical buildouts toward winning the AI race against China.

When Washington decides it can’t afford to lose, it stops debating… and starts building.

That’s how we built the atomic bomb first.

That’s how we beat the Soviets to the moon.

And that’s how we’re now responding to China’s push for AI dominance.

That’s why my team and I just released a free broadcast focused on what I believe is the most important government-backed investment opportunity of our lifetime… and the narrow window opening before Wall Street fully connects the dots.

Below, I’ll show you the framework — and the six bottlenecks investors should be watching right now.

Because events like this don’t feel obvious until after the opportunity has passed.

From Free ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½s to National Mobilization

For decades, when it came to the private sector, the prevailing belief in Washington was simple: Set fair rules, then get out of the way. The “invisible hand” would take care of the rest.

That invisible hand optimized for cheap labor, global efficiency, and short-term profits – but not national resilience. The result was a hollowed-out manufacturing base and a growing dependence on foreign rivals for the materials and technologies that now define economic and military power.

For a while, it looked like a win. Cheap goods. Higher margins. Faster growth.

That illusion has collapsed.

The U.S. has entered a new era of national mobilization. The government is setting the priorities, clearing obstacles, and backing companies that advance American AI dominance.

If a company helps achieve that goal, it gets fast-tracked approvals, government cash, and policy support.

That’s the new reality.

Over the past year, Silicon Valley has accepted that the next era is about building the modern equivalent of the Manhattan Project or Apollo Program.

In return, Washington has stopped pretending that decade-long approval processes and fragmented regulation are compatible with winning the race that will shape the next era.

This also explains why geopolitics suddenly feels louder: Supply chains are now strategy.

America has three nonnegotiable needs: massive energy, enormous quantities of raw materials, and unprecedented computing power.

And it doesn’t have enough of any of them.

So the government is acting accordingly… using diplomacy, industrial policy, and national security tools to secure energy supplies, stabilize material flows, and accelerate infrastructure buildouts. In effect, the U.S. government is helping secure the inputs AI needs: power, materials, and compute.

The 2010s investor playbook — capital-light, consumer-first growth — doesn’t fit this market. We are entering a period defined by heavy capital spending, physical constraints, and state-backed demand.

The strategy now is to own the choke points — the materials, power systems, infrastructure, and technologies that this new system cannot function without, and cannot scale fast enough on its own.

To that end, I have identified the 6-Layer AI Bottleneck Playbook.

1. The Raw Materials Layer: You can print money, but you can’t print copper — and you can’t code lithium. The physical inputs required for this buildout are in short supply. We face a 10-million-ton copper deficit over the next decade.

The Play: Own Western copper, lithium, and uranium. The ground itself is now a strategic asset.

2. The Power Layer: AI is an energy vampire. Big Tech is being forced to build its own power generation, bypassing the public grid entirely. The only solution for 24/7, carbon-free, massive-scale power is nuclear.

The Play: Own the existing nuclear fleet and the fuel cycle. They hold the keys to the energy source that fits the mission profile.

3. The Infrastructure Layer: A rack of Nvidia Blackwell chips runs so hot it would melt a standard server room. We have to retrofit the entire internet with liquid-cooling plumbing. We need new switchgear, new transformers, and massive new physical shells.

The Play: Own the companies that manage heat and physical power distribution. The “plumbers” of the AI age are about to become kings.

4. The Compute Layer: It’s no longer just about getting a raw GPU. It’s about “packaging” – the incredibly complex process of stitching the GPU and memory together on silicon. Further, the U.S. government is actively pushing American-designed custom silicon to reduce reliance on generic chips.

The Play: Own the packaging monopoly and the leaders in U.S.-designed custom silicon.

5. The Memory Layer: An AI chip without memory is useless. The new HBM (high bandwidth memory) chips are stacked vertically like skyscrapers on a microscopic scale. The manufacturing yield is terrible, and the entire global supply is sold out until 2027.

The Play: Own the domestic memory producers that have cornered the market on the high-end supply.

6. The Networking Layer: When you connect 100,000 GPUs together, copper wires are too slow. You need light. The insides of datacenters are switching from electrical cables to fiber optics and lasers.

The Play: Own the masters of optical interconnects and low-latency switching.

The Train Is Leaving

Look, I understand why this feels unsettling…

But if we lose the AI race to China, nothing else matters.

That’s why we’ve begun moving trillions of dollars – from both private coffers and the public purse – to the six bottlenecks listed above. The government is using a firehose to blast away regulatory hurdles and using its military to secure the supply lines.

In moments like this, the market rewards those who understand what’s happening and position themselves before execution begins.

Which is why I hope you’ll check out my new free broadcast.

During that event, I dig much deeper into this shift… breaking down what’s really happening behind the scenes, why this moment mirrors past mobilizations like Manhattan Project and Apollo Program, and how investors should be positioning as the next phase unfolds.

History shows where the real wealth is created.

The countdown has already begun.

Check out my new free broadcast here.

Sincerely,

Luke Lango

Senior Investment Analyst, InvestorPlace

The post The 6 Choke Points Powering the AI Boom in 2026 appeared first on InvestorPlace.

Yesterday morning’s $1.6 billion USA Rare Earth (USAR) deal highlighted a pattern that’s been quietly playing out for six months – one that’s delivered gains of 111%, 194%, and even 211% to early investors.

But it’s not just a pattern – functionally, it’s also a map showing investors where to put their money right now.

Our technology expert Luke Lango has been tracking this for months, and today, he’s releasing the names of the companies he believes are next to move.

To make sure we’re all on the same page, yesterday, the Department of Commerce announced it was taking an 8% to 16% equity stake in USA Rare Earth (USAR).

The stock jumped as much as 25% before closing the day about 8% higher.

If you’re keeping score, that’s the fifth time in six months the government has written a check, taken an equity stake in a company, and sent the stock higher:

• MP Materials (July) – the Pentagon took a 15% stake → MP surged 111% over the following week
• Intel (August) – the government invests $9 billion → INTC nearly doubled over three months
• Lithium Americas (September) – the government takes a 10% stake → shares jump 194% in two weeks
• Trilogy Metals (October) – the White House announces 10% equity stake → Trilogy shares pop 211% virtually overnight
• USA Rare Earth (January) – the Commerce Department takes up to 16% stake → USAR jumps 8% in first session

Five deals. Five pops. All within six months.

According to Luke, we’re watching the early stages of the most profound economic reorganization in American history as the government cannonballs into the private sector.

This has enormous implications for the investors who recognize this pattern and position themselves wisely.

To that end, today, Luke released his complete Genesis Mission research briefing. It reveals the specific companies Luke believes are positioned to benefit from this government mobilization.

To understand the scale of this opportunity, let’s start by piggybacking on Luke’s research to understand why this is happening…

Why the free market era just ended

For decades, Washington’s philosophy was simple: Set fair rules, then get out of the way. Let the free market allocate capital efficiently.

The problem was that the “invisible hand” of free markets loved cheap labor in China and didn’t care about national security. The result was a hollowed-out industrial base and China controlling 90% of the critical minerals needed to build the future.

As we’ve profiled many times in the Digest, China dominates rare earth processing. This means they have massive impact over the advanced chip supply chain – and by extension, AI breakthroughs.

The Trump administration looked at that reality and said: No more.

Here’s Luke on what’s replacing it:

We’ve entered a new era where the U.S. government is no longer just regulating markets… it’s actively partnering with private companies to win an existential race.

The United States is doing what it has always done at pivotal moments in history: mobilizing private industry, clearing regulatory roadblocks, funding winners, and setting hard deadlines to achieve a strategic goal.

This is what Luke calls the “Technological Republic” – a system where the government doesn’t seize the means of production, but directs it.

The criterion for picking winners is simple…

Does this company help America achieve undeniable, durable dominance in AI?

If yes, that company gets deregulation, subsidized capital, and the full weight of the U.S. government clearing its path.

How to follow the money

On November 24th, President Trump made it official with his Genesis Mission executive order.

The goals are straightforward:

• Use AI to accelerate energy advancements
• Invest in quantum computing for scientific breakthroughs
• Develop AI for national security

The executive order explicitly compares itself to the Manhattan Project and the Apollo Program. And it set hard deadlines, starting February 22nd.

Yesterday’s USAR deal is just the latest example. As I noted above, since July, the government has taken equity stakes in a handful of strategic companies – MP Materials, Intel, Lithium Americas, Trilogy Metals, and now USA Rare Earth.

But USAR won’t be the last.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has signaled the administration has identified at least seven industries it wants to build up. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” earmarked $7.5 billion specifically for critical strategic assets.

And according to Luke’s research, we can predict where the money flows next by understanding what he calls the “6-Layer AI Bottleneck Stack.”

The 6 choke points where fortunes will be made

Think of AI infrastructure like a pyramid. Every layer depends on the one below it.

But right now, we face critical shortages at every single level.

This means massive profit opportunities for the companies that control each bottleneck.

Here’s Luke’s framework:

Layer 1 – Raw materials (The dirt)
You cannot print copper. You cannot code lithium. The physical inputs for this buildout are in short supply, to say the least. For example, we’re facing a 10-million-ton copper deficit over the next decade according to projections from S&P Global.

Layer 2 – Power (the electrons)
AI is an energy vampire. OpenAI’s recent partnership with Nvidia requires 10 gigawatts of electricity – the output of ten large nuclear power plants – for just one partnership.

The current electrical grid cannot handle this. Nuclear is the only option, and the government knows it.

Layer 3 – Infrastructure (the shell)
A rack of Nvidia Blackwell chips runs so hot it would melt a standard server room. The entire internet must be retrofitted with liquid cooling. We need new transformers, new switchgear, and massive new physical shells.

Layer 4 – Compute (the brains)
The bottleneck has shifted from getting GPUs to “packaging” – the incredibly complex process of stitching the GPU and memory together.

Taiwan Semiconductor is practically the sole provider. The U.S. government is racing to change that.

Layer 5 – Memory (the context)
The new HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) chips are stacked vertically like microscopic skyscrapers. The manufacturing yield is terrible, and the entire global supply is sold out until 2027.

Layer 6 – Networking (the nervous system)
When you connect 100,000 GPUs together, copper wires are too slow. The entire data center interior is switching from electrical cables to fiber-optics and lasers. We’re short on the lasers.

Put it all together, and here’s Luke’s investment thesis in one sentence:

When unlimited capital chases scarce physical resources, prices go parabolic. The only way to invest in this environment is to own the choke points.

You must own the things that the Technological Republic cannot build its AI without, and which it currently doesn’t have enough of.

Why timing matters right now

Here’s what most investors miss, and why the timing matters so much…

By the time CNBC runs the headline “White House Takes Billion-Dollar Stake in XYZ Company,” the easy gains have been made.

Look at the pattern again:

• Lithium Americas drifted up 20% in the 45 days before the official announcement
• Trilogy Metals climbed 30% in the weeks before the 211% pop

Why?

According to Luke, the “Leak Cycle.”

Big deals don’t stay secret. Lawyers talk. Board members position themselves. Smart money quietly accumulates shares before the press release hits the wire.

And that means the opportunity is now – before the mainstream catches on to the next wave of government investments.

So, which companies are up next?

That’s where Luke’s Genesis Mission research comes in. He’s just identified the stocks positioned at each layer of the bottleneck stack.

Luke’s complete Genesis Mission research package is now live

Luke has spent months analyzing this opportunity and has identified the specific companies that the government is likely to target for the AI infrastructure build-out.

These aren’t trillion-dollar mega-caps. They’re small, obscure names in nuclear energy, advanced semiconductors, critical minerals, and quantum computing.

Today, Luke releases the complete playbook on this government mobilization, including:

• The politically connected nuclear company that could deliver 10X returns (the CEO was the only advanced reactor company invited to the Oval Office summit)
• The rare earth processor with technology that turns nuclear waste into 150 years of clean energy
• The American memory producer cornering the high-end HBM supply
• The optical networking leader positioned to wire the AI nervous system

Bottom line: The government has named its priorities… set its deadlines… and begun directing trillions of dollars toward the six bottlenecks.

For Luke’s deep dive into this story, plus the stocks he’s flagged as the next potential takeover targets, click here to access his research.

Wrapping up, yesterday’s USA Rare Earth deal is just the latest domino to fall. But this is a pattern, and we know which dominos are likely the next to tip. The issue is whether we’ll be positioned ahead of time – or reading about it afterward.

Luke’s complete Genesis Mission briefing is live now. Click here to access it.

Have a good evening,

Jeff Remsburg

The post Six AI Infrastructure Plays to Grow Your Wealth appeared first on InvestorPlace.

The American free market – that chaotic, beautiful, messy playground we’ve loved for decades – officially closed for renovation. And when it reopens, it won’t look anything like the one we once knew.

We are sprinting toward a corporate-state hybrid that looks less like 1980s Wall Street and more like 1942 – when Detroit stopped making Buicks and started building B-24 bombers. But instead of building planes to fight Nazi Germany…

We’re building data centers to fight China.

Which means if you’re still obsessing over P/E ratios, ROIC spreads, or debating the purity of “free market dynamics,” you can stop. That framework belongs to a market that no longer exists.

Don’t believe me? Just look at the scoreboard. 

In the last few months alone, the Trump administration hasn’t just supported companies; it’s bought equity in them. 

It converted CHIPS Act grants into a 10% stake in Intel (INTC)… took a 15% position in rare earths supplier MP Materials (MP)… then a 10% stake in Trilogy Metals (TMQ)… and a 10% stake in Lithium Americas (LAC)… 

In other words, the federal government is no longer just a regulator – it’s the biggest whale in the waters: the ultimate activist investor. And when the guy printing the money is also buying the stock, you do not bet against the trade.

I mean, each of those stocks – MP, INTC, TMQ, and LAC – more than doubled in a matter of weeks… some even tripled within days. These are some of the fastest, biggest gains I’ve seen in my career. 

But they were just the appetizer. 

The main course? The Genesis Mission – the single most important investment theme of 2026…

The Genesis Mission: America’s Manhattan Project for AI Dominance

On November 24, President Trump signed an executive order launching the Genesis Mission. The financial media – still obsessing over quarterly earnings and Fed policy – referred to it as an “AI initiative.” But we think they are missing the forest for the trees…

Because the Genesis Mission isn’t about building a better chatbot. It is the Manhattan Project for AI: a formal acknowledgment by the White House that “letting the market decide” is how you lose a war to a command economy like China. 

China doesn’t wait for a startup to secure funding to build a fusion reactor. It just builds it. Nor does it rely on market forces to secure its antimony supply. It seizes the mines instead.

That’s why the Trump administration has looked at Beijing and said, “Fine. Two can play at that game.”

Genesis will:

• Centralize Scientific Data
  • The Department of Energy (DOE) is nationalizing the world’s largest scientific datasets.
• Weaponize AI
  • These datasets are being fed into massive, state-run AI models trained on government supercomputers to solve physics and engineering problems that would normally take decades.
• Compress Timelines
  • The goal is to shrink 10 years of research and development into 10 months.
• Pick Winners
  • The government will identify the companies critical to this mission, fund them, provide them with the AI, and – most importantly for us – likely buy equity in them.

This is a total mobilization of the U.S. industrial base. And it is targeting exactly six strategic industries.

The Only Six Sectors That Matter in 2026

The Genesis Mission identifies six specific industries that will determine whether America remains a superpower or becomes a vassal state.

Trust me when I say that these are the only sectors that matter in 2026.

Genesis Mission Timeline: Your 270-Day Investment Window

The White House is not wasting time here. This executive order set a very aggressive timeline with specific deadlines, starting from the date of the order (Nov. 24, 2025):

• 60 Days (approx. Jan. 23, 2026):
  • The Secretary of Energy must submit a list of at least 20 specific challenges to solve within those six industries. (Editor’s note: Nothing announced yet but stay tuned. Government often moves slowly.)
• 90 Days (approx. Feb. 22, 2026):
  • Identify all available supercomputing and cloud resources that can be added to the Platform.
• 120 Days (approx. March 24, 2026):
  • Identify the initial datasets and models to be used.
  • Develop a security plan for bringing in data from outside the government (i.e. universities/private sector).
• 240 Days (approx. July 22, 2026):
  • Review capabilities for “robotic laboratories” and automated manufacturing facilities.
• 270 Days (approx. Aug. 21, 2026):
  • Go Live: The “American Science and Security Platform” must demonstrate “initial operating capability” for at least one of the identified challenges.
• 1 Year (Nov. 24, 2026):
  • The secretary must submit a full report on progress, user engagement, and scientific outcomes.

As far as Washington goes, that’s an all-out sprint… which means if you’re not positioned, you’re already late.

How the Government Picks Winners: The Equity Injection Playbook

Now we know the government’s playbook: identify a critical need within those six pillars, find the best American companies doing it, inject cash, take equity… sending the stock price to the moon. 

We saw this with Intel, MP, Trilogy Metals, and Lithium Americas. 

And we will see it again – and again, and again – with companies tied to the Genesis Mission in 2026. 

No one knows for sure what companies those will be. But we’ve been researching this initiative – and others like it – very closely. And we’ve put together a list of stocks that we view as “high-probability partners” within each of the six targeted industries.

Biotech: AI Drug Discovery Stocks

The government wants AI models that can design new drugs, materials, and biological defenses in months instead of years. That requires massive proprietary datasets of cellular behavior and computational biology platforms already built and operational.

• Recursion Pharmaceuticals (RXRX): The “poster child” for this mission. It has the “BioHive” supercomputer and a massive proprietary dataset of cellular images (over 20 petabytes). Plus, it’s already partnered with Nvidia (NVDA) and is building exactly what the Genesis Mission describes: an AI map of biology.
• Ginkgo Bioworks (DNA): Its strength is biosecurity and data. The company has existing contracts with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) to detect biological threats, which aligns perfectly with the “National Security” component of the mission.
• Schrödinger (SDGR): Uses physics-based software (AI) for material science and drug discovery. Its platform is essential for the “simulation” aspect mentioned in Section 3 of the order.
• Absci (ABSI): Focused on Generative AI for antibody creation. A likely target for grants, as the government will look to feed Absci’s data into its federal platform.
• Twist Bioscience (TWST): A leader in synthetic DNA manufacturing. You can’t have AI design a new biological organism without someone to print the DNA. Twist is the infrastructure layer for this.

Critical Materials: Rare Earth & Uranium Plays

You can’t build AI data centers, missiles, or next-gen batteries without rare earths, antimony, and lithium. And you certainly can’t rely on Chinese supply chains. The government will secure domestic production – through equity stakes, DPA funding, or outright nationalization if necessary.

• Perpetua Resources (PPTA): Controls the Stibnite Gold Project, the only domestic source of antimony (critical for munitions/missiles). It has already received Defense Production Act (DPA) funding; a deeper equity stake is a logical next step to ensure the mine opens.
• MP Materials (MP): The firm is already partially government-backed, but expect this to deepen. It is the only scaled rare earths producer in the United States.
• Standard Lithium (SLI): U.S.-based (Arkansas) lithium extraction supplier direct lithium extraction (DLE) technology, which is cleaner and faster – fitting the “tech-forward” mandate.
• Centrus Energy (LEU): We see this as a critical target. It is the only U.S. company licensed to produce High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU), which is required for next-gen nuclear reactors. The government must ensure this company succeeds to power the data centers.

Nuclear: Small Modular Reactor Stocks

AI requires massive, constant power. Renewable energy can’t handle the baseload demand of 24/7 supercomputing clusters. The Genesis Mission explicitly calls for “Energy Dominance” – which means nuclear. Specifically, small modular reactors (SMRs) and micro-reactors that can be deployed near data centers.

• Oklo Inc. (OKLO): The Sam Altman-backed company builds fast fission micro-reactors and was selected for the DOE’s “Reactor Pilot Program” in 2025. Its small footprint makes it perfect for powering the specific AI data centers mentioned in the mission.
• NuScale Power (SMR): The first to get design approval for Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). Despite financial hurdles, the government cannot afford to let its only licensed SMR player fail.
• BWX Technologies (BWXT): Builds nuclear reactors for the U.S. Navy. It is the “safe hands” partner for the government to build micro-reactors (Project Pele) for the Genesis Platform’s physical infrastructure.
• Nano Nuclear Energy (NNE): This company is working to develop portable micro-reactors – highly speculative, but exactly the kind of “high risk/high reward” tech the mission aims to accelerate.
• Constellation Energy (CEG): Less of an “innovation” play and more of an “infrastructure” play. It owns the nuclear plants that will likely be contracted to provide baseload power to the DOE’s new supercomputing centers.

Quantum Computing: The Genesis Platform’s Secret Weapon

Classical AI can’t solve certain optimization and simulation problems. Genesis requires  integrating quantum computing into the platform to tackle challenges that would take classical computers millennia to solve – logistics, grid management, molecular simulation, cryptography.

• IonQ (IONQ): The clear leader in trapped-ion quantum computing – it already has a partnership with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (a DOE lab) for grid optimization. We see IonQ as the most likely to be the “Quantum Engine” of the Genesis Platform.
• Rigetti Computing (RGTI): The U.S.-based superconducting quantum player has sold QPUs (Quantum Processing Units) to the DOE before.
• D-Wave Quantum (QBTS): D-Wave focuses on “Quantum Annealing,” which is excellent for optimization problems (like logistics or grid management) mentioned in the order.
• Quantinuum via Honeywell (HON): While Honeywell is a conglomerate, its Quantinuum spin-off is a top-tier player. The government may push for a direct stake or separate listing.

Semiconductors: Chip Stocks Getting Government Bailouts

AI runs on chips. Period. Domestic production of the semiconductors that power the AI models, the data centers, and the robotic manufacturing systems is essential. We cannot rely on Taiwan or South Korea when we’re in a technological war with China.

• Wolfspeed (WOLF): A leader in Silicon Carbide (SiC), essential for high-efficiency power management in data centers and EVs. It has struggled financially, making it a prime target for a “bailout-for-equity” deal to save U.S. capabilities.
• SkyWater Technology (SKYT): A “Trusted Foundry” accredited by the DOD. The firm is the only U.S.-owned pure-play foundry. It is small, struggling, and absolutely critical for classified chips.
• Micron Technology (MU): AI requires massive amounts of HBM (High Bandwidth Memory), and Micron is the U.S. champion for memory.
• Intel (INTC): Already heavily involved, but the Genesis Mission will likely force its Foundry business to separate or further integrate with defense needs, potentially leading to more direct government oversight/ownership.

Advanced Manufacturing: Robotics & Automation Plays

The executive order calls for “robotic laboratories” and automated manufacturing facilities that can close the loop from AI design to physical production. You need robots that can mix chemicals, handle materials, and execute experiments faster than human researchers ever could.

• Rockwell Automation (ROK): The U.S. giant of industrial automation. If the DOE wants to build “automated production facilities,” Rockwell provides the nervous system.
• Teradyne (TER): Owner of Universal Robots; makes “cobots” (collaborative robots) that can work inside labs to physically mix chemicals or handle materials, automating the scientific process.
• Symbotic (SYM): AI-powered warehouse robotics. Its technology could be adapted for the “logistics” of the massive datasets and sample libraries the DOE manages.
• Thermo Fisher Scientific (TMO): This company makes the actual lab equipment. While a safe blue-chip, they will likely win the contracts to build the “robotic labs” described in Section 3(e).

Bottom Line: Why Genesis Mission Stocks Are the Only Trade That Matters in 2026

The Genesis Mission is a signal fire — a government-issued roadmap showing exactly where trillions of dollars in U.S. capital are about to flow.

Public money.

Private money.

Fast-tracked money.

Washington isn’t “stimulating” the economy anymore … it’s mobilizing it.

Just like the Manhattan Project… just like Apollo… the government is building a national fortress — and selecting the companies that will form its foundation. Those companies will come to define the next cycle.

That’s why the smartest strategy for 2026 isn’t stock-picking based on macro guesses or Fed-watching…

It’s alignment.

Align your capital with the Genesis Mission’s six industrial pillars. Ignore the noise about interest rates, GDP prints, or consumer sentiment. Those are second-order effects now.

In 2026, there is only one balance sheet that truly matters: the federal government’s.

And Washington is preparing to deploy staggering sums — through grants, guaranteed contracts, regulatory fast-tracks, and direct equity stakes — into a very specific set of industries and companies.

We already know the playbook.

We already know the timeline.

And, critically, we already know the shortlist of companies most likely to benefit.

The only real question left is timing.

Will you be positioned before the capital floods in… Or will you be chasing headlines after the easy money is gone?

Because this is no longer theoretical. The National Nuclear Security Administration has already issued a Request for Information titled “Transformational AI Capabilities for National Security.” Execution is underway. Contracts are being shaped. Funding priorities are being finalized.

And this was just days after the Genesis Mission was formally unveiled — confirming what insiders already know: this is a production program, not a research project.

Energy sits at the center of it all. And nuclear power is the keystone.

If you want to understand how this unfolds… which companies are positioned to benefit first… and where the real asymmetric opportunities are hiding before Wall Street fully wakes up…

You need to watch my Genesis Mission briefing now.

This is the narrow window between validation and execution.

Miss it and you’ll spend the next decade reading about gains you could have positioned for today.

The post The Genesis Mission Has a 270-Day Timeline – And You’re Already Late appeared first on InvestorPlace.

Well, that didn’t take long…

At the start of the month, as our analysts were unveiling their 2026 predictions for the market, I made one of my own…

This year will bring a wave of new, controversial legislative proposals aimed at investment wealth – proposals that may not pass immediately, but will introduce a new layer of policy risk investors will have to price in.

Behind my prediction was our ever-widening K-shaped economy.

In the K’s upper spoke, Americans with assets are watching their net worths soar as the stock market and home prices keep rising.

But in the K’s lower spoke, Americans without assets face high retail prices and paychecks that aren’t keeping up with inflation.

The gap between these two groups is at historically wide levels. Data from the Federal Reserve shows that the top 1% of households own 31.7% of all U.S. wealth. This is the highest share on record since the Fed began tracking it in 1989.

History shows that large and persistent economic splits don’t stay contained. Over time, they tend to produce policy responses. That was the basis for my prediction.

With that context, let’s jump to CNBC from last week:

The Billionaire Tax Act, which is currently collecting signatures to be added to the November ballot in California, proposes a one-time 5% tax on the total wealth of residents with $1 billion or more in net worth.

The tax would apply to California residents as of Jan. 1, 2026.

Now, to be fair, California’s Billionaire Tax Act was first proposed last fall. But last week brought fresh momentum as signature gathering officially kicked off for the November ballot.

The threat to non-billionaires

You say you’re not a billionaire, so you have nothing to fear?

Fair enough. But let’s flesh it out a bit deeper.

President Trump’s AI and crypto czar, David Sacks, had a blunt assessment of California’s proposal during an appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” from Davos last week:

This is not a tax, this is an asset seizure.

Never been anything like this before in American history.

Then, he added the critical point:

It’s not a one-time, it’s a first time.

And if they get away with it, there’ll be a second time and a third time.

Does Sacks have a point here? Perhaps one suggests all of us non-billionaires might eventually be impacted by such a proposal?

History suggests “yes.”

The pattern of tax proposals starting narrow and expanding wide is one of the most reliable dynamics in American fiscal history.

An expensive walk down memory lane

Consider the alternative minimum tax (AMT).

When Congress created the AMT in 1969, it targeted exactly 155 wealthy households that had used deductions and loopholes to pay zero federal income tax despite earning substantial incomes.

The legislation was sold as a “fairness” measure – a way to ensure the ultra-wealthy paid their “fair share.”

Sounds reasonable, right?

Fast forward to 2017, just before the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act reformed the AMT. By that point, the tax was hitting roughly 5 million households – many of them solidly middle class.

That’s a 32,000X expansion from the original 155 households it was designed to target.

How did this happen?

Easy. The AMT wasn’t indexed for inflation in its early decades. So, as wages rose with inflation, more and more “ordinary” Americans found themselves caught in a tax designed for the ultra-wealthy.

Our government loved the revenue, so it did nothing to curb the scope creep.

“Whatever, Jeff – my wages are nowhere close to getting me to billionaire status. So, I’m still unconcerned. Tax away.”

Before you land there, let’s revisit the federal income tax itself.

When first introduced in 1913, it applied only to the top 3% of households. The top marginal rate was 7% on income over $500,000 (roughly $15 million in today’s dollars).

It was explicitly sold as a tax on the wealthy.

Within a decade, rates had climbed to 77%. By World War II, the top rate hit 94%, and the tax base had expanded dramatically to include middle-class workers.

Today, roughly 59% of American households pay federal income tax.

So, what started as a “millionaire’s tax” became the primary funding mechanism for the federal government.

Bottom line: Tax proposals aimed at “the rich” expand downward over time.

Either through bracket creep, inflation-indexing failures, or outright legislative changes, the definition of “wealthy” is often revised to capture more taxpayers and generate more revenue.

“Jeff, I still don’t care. There won’t be enough scope-creep to affect me in my lifetime. Make those billionaires pay their fair share!”

Okay, one more wrinkle…

How this proposal could affect all of us – immediately

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that California’s billionaire tax stays exactly as proposed – a one-time 5% levy on residents with $1 billion or more in net worth.

There’s still a significant problem for the broader market – which means you and me…

This is a tax on paper wealth, not income.

Most billionaires don’t have $50 million sitting in cash to write a check to Sacramento. Their wealth is tied up in stocks, real estate, private company equity, and other illiquid assets.

To pay a 5% wealth tax, many would need to sell assets.

So, when you’re talking about liquidating billions of dollars in holdings – potentially in a compressed timeframe to meet tax deadlines – that creates downward pressure in the market, which can directly impact your portfolio value.

But it’s bigger than that…

If the California wealth tax passes and generates big revenues, you can be certain you’ll see the same thing in New York, Massachusetts, Washington, and other blue states with large concentrations of wealth.

Suddenly, you’re looking at forced asset sales from billionaires across multiple states, all trying to raise cash to pay wealth taxes. Stocks are the easiest assets to sell, which – again – means a major headwind for equity markets. And it introduces a new layer of uncertainty for investors…

How do you value a company when a significant portion of its largest shareholders might be forced sellers for tax reasons rather than fundamental business concerns?

Do all those Discounted Cash Flow models from the Big Banks now have to back out the equity ownership of billionaire investors?

But now, take it one step further…

What happens if this becomes a repeat wealth tax as David Sachs predicts? (Or rather, “when” it happens?)

What happens when the tax threshold falls from $1 billion to $500 million?

Then $100 million…

$50 million.

How do you price that? What happens if this becomes an institutionalized, yearly headwind of “forced selling” pushing against market gains?

You and me – with our sub-$50-million net worths – will be safe from the tax itself, but our portfolio values won’t be safe from the impact of such wealth taxes.

So, what can we do about it?

The uncomfortable truth is we have little control over whether proposals like California’s billionaire tax will pass.

Given the widening wealth gap I highlighted at the start of today’s Digest, I suspect more legislation like this will eventually pass.

But while we can’t control the legislative environment, we can control our investment strategy. And one of the few things we can do is position our portfolios to generate enough wealth to offset the potential hit we’ll experience – whether from higher taxes directly, or from the market headwinds these policies create.

And that brings us to new research from our technology expert Luke Lango.

Tomorrow, Luke releases his latest research briefing on what he’s calling the most profound economic reorganization in American history since the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

While politicians debate wealth taxes, Luke’s been tracking something far more immediate…

A $500 billion government mobilization that officially launched on November 24th with President Trump’s Genesis Mission executive order.

The three goals?

• Use AI to accelerate energy advancements
• Invest in quantum computing for scientific breakthroughs
• Develop AI for national security

The executive order explicitly compares itself to the Manhattan Project and the Apollo Program.

And if that sounds grandiose, consider what happened last time the government mobilized like this: Companies like DuPont and Boeing delivered gains of 1,844% and 24,400% respectively.

This time, 52 companies have been named to win the AI race against China, with hard deadlines starting February 22nd.

These aren’t trillion-dollar mega-caps. They’re small, obscure names in quantum computing, nuclear energy, and advanced semiconductors.

Here’s Luke with more on the opportunity:

We’ve entered a new era where the U.S. government is no longer just regulating markets… it’s actively partnering with private companies to win an existential race.

The United States is doing what it has always done at pivotal moments in history: mobilizing private industry, clearing regulatory roadblocks, funding winners, and setting hard deadlines to achieve a strategic goal.

By naming its partners and moving money, the government has made its priorities clear.

A perfect example dropped this morning…

USA Rare Earth (USAR) announced that the Department of Commerce will take an equity stake in the company – providing $1.3 billion in loans and $277 million in federal funding.

In exchange, the U.S. government will own 8% to 16% of the company, depending on whether warrants are exercised.

Stepping back, Luke has spent months analyzing this opportunity and has identified what he calls the “6-Layer AI Bottleneck Stack” – the specific choke points where government money will flow and where the biggest gains will be made.

Here’s his quick takeaway:

When unlimited capital chases scarce physical resources, prices go parabolic. The only way to invest in this environment is to own the choke points.

You must own the things that our government cannot build its AI without, and which it currently doesn’t have enough of.

Tomorrow, Luke releases his complete Genesis Mission research briefing with the specific companies positioned at these bottlenecks.

I’ll bring you more details in tomorrow’s Digest.

Wrapping up…

I opened today’s Digest by highlighting my prediction that 2026 would bring controversial legislative proposals aimed at investment wealth.

And just three weeks into the year, that prediction is already gaining momentum in California.

But it’s not alone.

I’ll leave you with this…

• In December, Washington Governor Bob Ferguson proposed the state’s first income tax in modern history – a 9.9% levy on personal income over $1 million.
• Michigan residents could face a ballot initiative this year adding a 5% surcharge on individuals earning more than $500,000.
• Colorado just advanced a measure to change its flat tax rate to a graduated income tax, potentially raising more than $4 billion when it goes before voters in 2026.
• And New York City’s new mayor campaigned on raising the city’s income tax on millionaires by 2 percentage points.

The pattern is already emerging.

We can’t control whether these proposals pass or expand. But we can control how we position our portfolios.

More help from Luke on this tomorrow.

Have a good evening,

Jeff Remsburg

The post The Danger in California’s Billionaire Tax appeared first on InvestorPlace.

Last week, the headlines were dominated by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Specifically, the back and forth between President Trump and European/NATO allies regarding the status of Greenland dominated the chatter.

But the bigger message that emerged from the week that globalism is dead.

It also means the focus is now shifting to building and producing more in the U.S., and we have the data to back it up.

The Atlanta Fed recently revised its fourth-quarter GDP (gross domestic product) estimate up to 5.4%.

Powering that growth: stronger exports, consumer spending – and the data center buildout for the AI Revolution.

Also, since small-cap stocks tend to be more domestic in nature, we have seen many smaller stocks post some incredible gains. So far this year, the Russell 2000 index has gone up 7%, outpacing the S&P 500’s 2% gain.

In this week’s Navellier ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ Buzz, I dive deeper into the outperformance of smaller stocks so far this year. I also discuss the Davos and Greenland situation and preview some upcoming earnings announcements this week (be sure to look for my take on a few Magnificent Seven results later this week).

Plus, to celebrate 5,000 subscribers on YouTube, I’ll share how you can win a free copy of my latest book, The Sacred Truths of Investing.

Click the image below to watch now.

To see more of my videos, click here to subscribe to my YouTube channel.

Plus, the grades in Stock Grader (subscription required) have been updated this week! Click here to plug in your own stocks and see how they rate.

Uncle Sam’s Next Move…

Now, the shift away from globalism and toward domestic growth isn’t just a short-term trend. It’s one of the most consequential shifts in industrial policy since WWII.

And, as investors, we need to pay attention to this trend – or risk getting left out of the next wave of growth.

As part of this monumental shift, Uncle Sam is launching a renewed effort to strengthen key U.S. industries. The reasoning behind this shift is clear…

If we want to secure supply chains…

If we want to win the AI race…

And if we want to continue to grow and prosper…

Then we need a modern equivalent of the Manhattan Project and Apollo Program.

This initiative is called Genesis.

My friend and colleague, Luke Lango, has been following Genesis closely, particularly how government priorities, funding and policy support are aligning.

Historically, moments like this tend to favor smaller companies over the biggest, most well-known names. That means moves like this can quietly reshape parts of the market before most investors realize what’s happening.

So, Luke has put together a special presentation to explain what Genesis is, why it matters now and how investors like you can take advantage of it.

You’ll hear more about Luke’s research tomorrow, so keep a close eye on your inbox. You don’t want to miss it.

Sincerely,

Louis Navellier

Editor, ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ 360

The post ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½s Rally, Small Caps Soar – and Uncle Sam’s Next Big Move… appeared first on InvestorPlace.

In September 1977, NASA launched Voyager 1 into the outer solar system. This spacecraft, which is still active today, carried unique and precious cargo…

A collection of music on a Golden Record.

The 90-minute compilation was designed to convey the diverse richness of Earth’s cultures. It was, essentially, humanity’s “message in a bottle” to the universe – and any other beings that might be out there.

It featured classical music, from Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart; popular songs, like Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode”; and traditional music from around the world, including a Navajo chant, Azerbaijani bagpipes, and a Peruvian wedding song.

The image below shows the Golden Record, including etched instructions to any extraterrestrials out there.

I share this story not to focus on the feats of space travel, but to impart a key lesson about the importance of diversification.

Like the Golden Record, your portfolio should feature a diverse set of companies.

Consider this: Several of the Magnificent Seven companies are set to report their quarterly earnings this week. Although these companies remain immensely profitable, the cost of creating competitive AI infrastructure is massive and rising, while the ultimate payoff is becoming less certain and immediate.

Much of Big Tech is priced for perfection. And when expectations are that high, there is little room for error, and even less room to grow. So, it is time to adjust to a world where the Mag 7 stocks do not produce robust cash flow and fat profit margins as reliably as they did in the past.

Now is the time to diversify away from richly valued tech and toward resilient, real-world value.

To be sure, many of the stock market winners of the next decade will emerge from technology breeding grounds like Silicon Valley. But many winners will also spring from non-tech locales – either because they are enabling AI, applying AI, or possess a durable immunity to it.

A balanced portfolio, therefore, should feature companies that are successfully riding the AI wave, as well as companies that the wave cannot ever wash away.

These are the “AI Survivors.”

They are enterprises that produce physical products or services that AI cannot replace.

Take agriculture companies, for example. No matter how sophisticated AI becomes, humans will want to eat avocados and bananas – and AI can’t grow or pick them.

Now, AI Survivors are easy to overlook. That is why I detail several of them in my free AI Survivors broadcast.

I strongly suggest diversifying your portfolio by putting your money to work outside of traditional AI stocks. You can think of it as creating your own “Golden Portfolio”… without having to launch anything into space.

And this past week here at Smart Money, we talked about several other ways you can diversify your portfolio, including investing in foreign stocks and commodities like copper.

Take a look below, and then I’ll share an upcoming opportunity in AI, national security, and U.S. industry.

Smart Money Roundup

January 21, 2026

With “1-in-2” Odds AGI Hits by 2030, Here’s What to Do Now

Anthropic recently rolled out Claude Cowork, a new AI agent that turns the Claude AI assistant from a chat-only helper into a more actions-oriented digital collaborator. It is able to perform tasks at a level that signals AGI’s imminent arrival.

So, I’ll explain the details behind Claude’s new AI agent and how it hints at what we should expect from AGI. Then, I’ll reveal the safest and most profitable ways to prepare.

January 22, 2026

Circle These Dates: The ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½’s Next Big Windows

ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ moves are not purely random or headline-driven. Instead, there are recurring windows – measurable, testable, and historically reliable – that quietly shape returns year after year.

As we head deeper into 2026, understanding those windows may matter far more than any resolution you made a few weeks ago. That is why our partners at TradeSmith just debuted their new Seasonality tool. Click here to learn more.

January 24, 2026

Greenland Headlines Fade… but the ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ Risk Doesn’t

As headline geopolitical tensions cool, the underlying pressures on the greenback remain. So, Tom Yeung shares how declining global confidence in the U.S. dollar – driven by geopolitical tensions and a slowing U.S. economy – could trigger further depreciation.

He also looks into what a dollar decline means for investors like us. Then, he shares how you can reduce dollar dependence in your portfolio in order to stay ahead of a potential continued slide.

January 25, 2026

The U.S. Government Just Picked Its Next AI Winners

The U.S. has quietly shifted from free-market globalism to a government-directed mobilization to win the AI race. This echoes past moments like the Manhattan Project and Apollo Program, where Washington partnered with private industry, cleared obstacles, and moved massive capital to achieve strategic dominance.

Luke Lango joins us to share how a government-led mobilization is reshaping markets, rewriting investment rules, and creating the next generation of winners.

Set a Reminder for Tomorrow, January 27

While NASA launched Voyager 1 around 50 years ago for space discovery, the U.S. government recently launched the “Genesis Mission,” aimed at accelerating U.S. scientific discovery and innovation using AI.

The Genesis Mission is meant to mobilize American industry across six sectors: AI, quantum computing, nuclear energy, biotech, semiconductors, and advanced manufacturing.

My InvestorPlace colleague Luke Lango believes significant new contracts and government investments will be announced as the Genesis Mission progresses, which will cause the stocks receiving those investments to see significant bullish moves.

Luke’s network of Silicon Valley insiders positions him to identify the eight best plays set to profit from this mission – before Wall Street catches on.

These are the companies that will receive significant backing from the government, and where the Genesis Mission resources will make a meaningful impact on their revenues and profits.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, January 27, Luke Lango is hosting a free Genesis Mission broadcast – and it’s focused on the next major catalyst tied to AI, national security, and U.S. industry.

The link to this special event will be sent directly to your inbox. And I’d strongly recommend watching it as soon as it hits your inbox… this is the kind of event investors talk about after the window closes.

Regards,

Eric Fry

The post How to Create a “Golden Portfolio” in an Overcrowded Tech ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ appeared first on InvestorPlace.

This Week’s Ratings Changes:

Upgraded: Strong to Very Strong

Downgraded: Very Strong to Strong

Upgraded: Neutral to Strong

Downgraded: Strong to Neutral

Upgraded: Weak to Neutral

Downgraded: Neutral to Weak

Upgraded: Very Weak to Weak

Downgraded: Weak to Very Weak

To stay on top of my latest stock ratings, plug your holdings into Stock Grader, my proprietary stock screening tool. But, you must be a subscriber to one of my premium services.

To learn more about my premium service, Growth Investor, and get my latest picks, go here. Or, if you are a member of one of my premium services, you can go here to get started.

Sincerely,

Louis Navellier

Editor, ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ 360

The post Allstate Upgraded, Amazon Downgraded: Updated Rankings on Top Blue-Chip Stocks appeared first on InvestorPlace.

We are watching the strangest, most profitable contradiction in modern economic history unfold in real time. We have a Republican administration – ostensibly the party of deregulation and “hands-off” economics – engaging in what looks like state-sponsored capitalism.

The federal government is writing checks and taking equity stakes, acting less like a government and more like a venture capitalist with a printing press.

If you’re a purist, you might be horrified. But if you’re an investor who likes making money, you should be thrilled…

Because this new policy has created an almost predictable, explosive pattern in the markets. We’ve seen it happen four times in the last four months.

Intel (INTC). MP Materials (MP). Trilogy Metals (TMQ). Lithium Americas (LAC). All are public stocks. All were targeted by the White House for big investments. And all soared in value after Uncle Sam got positioned.

Now, based on a convergence of signals that are practically screaming at me from my terminal, I believe Shock No. 5 is imminent.

I’ve recorded a brand-new urgent briefing detailing exactly what could be coming next. Think of it as the context you need before my next broadcast on the “Genesis Mission” goes live on January 27.

Before my Genesis Mission briefing, I want you to understand why this is happening so that when the news breaks, you aren’t one of the thousands of investors stuck standing on the sidelines.Investors who wait for clarity usually get it… right after the opportunity window closes.

This is about getting oriented before the spotlight turns on, so when our Genesis Mission broadcast arrives, you’re ready to act on it and stay ahead of the crowd.

How Government-Backed Stocks Create Overnight “Shocks”

Let me show you exactly what I mean with the most dramatic example.

Earlier this year, copper and zinc miner Trilogy Metals was a boring company. It had potential; but most Americans had never heard of it. The stock was sleepy, largely trading around $2 per share.

Then, after the closing bell on October 6, 2025, the White House dropped a bomb, announcing a 10% equity stake in the company for $35.6 million.

The next morning, the stock opened at $7.

If you held shares the night before, you woke up to a 211% gain in a single trading session. That is more than the “Magnificent 7” stocks usually make in an entire year, delivered before you’d even finished your morning coffee.

And this wasn’t the first time this year that moves like this sent stocks soaring.

• Shock #1 (July 2025): The Pentagon took a 15% stake in MP Materials to secure rare earth minerals. The stock surged 111% in the week following the news.
• Shock #2 (August 2025): The Pentagon poured $9 billion into Intel. The stock almost doubled over the next three months.
• Shock #3 (September 2025): The government announced it was seeking a 10% stake in Lithium Americas. Shares jumped 194% in the following two weeks.
• Shock #4 (October 2025): The Trilogy Metals explosion – 211% in a day.

Four massive, life-changing stock moves in the span of a few months, all thanks to federal intervention.

The Trump administration has decided that certain assets – like lithium, rare earths, and copper – are too critical to national security to be left to the whims of the open market. 

And this federal ‘land grab’ is still in its early stages.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has signaled that the administration has identified at least seven industries it wants to build up. The Financial Times is reporting that “The U.S. is not finished.” And the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” that just passed earmarked $7.5 billion specifically for critical strategic assets.

My research indicates a massive chunk of that money is heading toward one specific sector… 

A sector that is currently facing a crisis so severe, it threatens to derail the entire AI revolution.

The AI Energy Crisis – and Why Nuclear Is the Only Real Solution

I’m on the phone with tech folks constantly. We talk about AI – the opportunities, the headwinds, the bottlenecks.

And the biggest threat is no longer about chips or code. It’s power.

The AI data centers being built right now are ‘energy vampires.’ For example, OpenAI recently announced a $100 billion partnership with Nvidia (NVDA) to build computing infrastructure that requires 10 gigawatts of electricity.

That’s roughly the output of 10 large nuclear power plants – just for one partnership.

Goldman Sachs (GS) predicts data center power demand will jump 50% by 2027 and 165% by 2030.

The grid cannot handle this.

AI facilities need 24/7 baseload power, which, unfortunately, means that renewable energies like solar or wind can’t solve this. They’re intermittent sources that don’t work when the sun sets and the wind dies down.

Battery technology isn’t close enough to bridging the gaps. Fossil fuels are politically difficult for Net-Zero commitments.

That leaves one option – nuclear.

And Big Tech is going all-in.

• Microsoft (MSFT) signed a 20-year power purchase agreement to restart Three Mile Island’s Unit 1 reactor (yes, that Three Mile Island), which will supply 835 megawatts – enough to power roughly 800,000 homes
• Amazon (AMZN) anchored a $500 million investment in X-Energy, a small modular reactor developer, with plans to bring more than 5 gigawatts of nuclear capacity online across multiple projects in Washington and Virginia.
• Alphabet (GOOGL) inked the world’s first corporate agreement to purchase nuclear energy from multiple small modular reactors, ordering up to 500 megawatts from Kairos Power, with the first reactor targeted for 2030.

The government sees this. That’s why, in May 2025, President Trump signed executive orders to “Make Atoms Great Again,” aiming to quadruple nuclear capacity to 400 gigawatts by 2050.

But traditional nuclear plants take 10-plus years to build – and AI can’t wait. Realistically, we need a solution that deploys in two to three years, while also solving the issue of nuclear waste.

And I have found the one company that does both.

Washington’s Open Secret About Nuclear Power

The United States has 90,000 metric tons of nuclear waste sitting in storage. That’s a major liability.

But thanks to its next-gen tech, the company I’ve identified turns spent nuclear waste into fuel. That liability becomes 150 years of clean energy.

Though, as the old saying goes, it’s often not what you know but who you know.

And this company is the most politically connected I have ever seen…

All of these connections matter. 

But if history is any guide, the real money comes to those who get positioned before any official announcement.

The Leak Cycle That Signals Government Investment Ahead of Time

Here is the most urgent part of my message to you today.

When Trilogy Metals popped 211%, it looked like an overnight success. But if you zoomed in on the chart, you saw that in the weeks leading up to the announcement, the stock had already climbed 30%.

When Lithium Americas popped 194%, the stock had drifted up 20% in the 45 days prior.

Why? The Leak Cycle.

Deals this big don’t stay secret. Lawyers talk. Board members position themselves. The “smart money” quietly accumulates shares before the press release hits the wire.

We are seeing those signals right now with this nuclear company:

• A multibillion-dollar partnership with European allies to build fuel infrastructure on American soil
• The largest corporate power agreement in the nuclear sector – 12 gigawatts across hundreds of planned reactors
• A groundbreaking ceremony at a federal research facility attended by cabinet secretaries, governors, and senators

The stock is starting to drift. The volume is picking up. 

My analysis suggests an announcement could come in the coming weeks.

And if I’m right, we could be looking at a move that dwarfs Trilogy Metals’ gains – because Trilogy was a $35 million investment in a copper mine. This could be a multi-billion-dollar stake in the foundational energy source for the entire AI economy.

I’m predicting 10X potential here.

Waiting for the Headline Means Missing the Trade

Most investors will wait until they see the headline on CNBC: “White House Announces Billion-Dollar Stake in Nuclear Firm.”

By then, the stock will be up 100% or more. The easy money will be gone.

You have a choice. You can be part of the crowd that gets shocked or part of the group that gets positioned.

My firm identified MP Materials before the Pentagon stake. We identified Lithium Americas before the 194% jump and Trilogy Metals before its 211% explosion.

Now I’m pounding the table on the next move.

When Washington decides something is too important to leave to chance, markets break out.

Yet the biggest gains never go to the investors who wait for the press conferences, the headlines, or the analyst upgrades. They go to the ones who understand what’s being built … and who position themselves before execution begins and capital floods in.

I’ve pulled everything I’ve learned into a special presentation that walks through:

• How the “Genesis Mission” follows the same early-stage pattern as past government mobilizations
• Why a small subset of companies stand to benefit disproportionately as funding priorities are revealed
• How to think about positioning across the stack … not just one idea, but the real bottlenecks the government can’t work around
• And one specific opportunity I believe sits at the center of this shift
  

The broadcast will go live on Tuesday, January 27.

There’s no registration and no link to hunt down. If you’re a subscriber, you’ll get all the details directly through your regular Hypergrowth Investing issue on January 27 — including how to watch as soon as it goes live.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Look at the history. Look at the timelines. Look at what happens when Washington stops debating and starts building.

The only real question is whether you’ll be positioned before the market catches on.

The post Why This Government-Backed Stock Could Be the Biggest Winner of 2026 appeared first on InvestorPlace.

He believes that significant new contracts and government investments will soon be announced following the progression of a recent executive order. The order’s aim is to mobilize American industry across six sectors, and the stocks receiving those investments will see significant bullish moves.

That is why, on Tuesday, January 27, he’ll be hosting a free special broadcast focused on this next major catalyst and its impact on AI, national security, and U.S. industry. Consider this a reminder, and I urge you to set another one for Tuesday.

In the meantime, I’ve invited Luke to share more about the U.S.’s relentless pursuit to be first in AI… and how you can profit from it.

Take it away, Luke…

In the early 1940s, Americans couldn’t quite explain why steel was rationed, why obscure chemical companies were suddenly flush with cash, or why Washington cared so much about desert towns in New Mexico. 

And in the early 1960s, few investors understood why the government was pouring billions into rockets, computing machines, and aerospace firms most people had never heard of.

But those who recognized what was really happening (that the United States had mobilized private industry to win an existential race), were able to position themselves early and change their financial futures forever.

Stop trying to make sense of 2026 using the rulebook from 2019. That book is burned. Today, we are living through the most profound economic reorganization in American history since the signing of the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago. 

We have left the era of “free market globalism” – a fifty-year fever dream where we pretended geography didn’t matter and that selling cheap consumer apps was the pinnacle of human achievement.

That party is over.

We’ve entered a new era where the U.S. government is no longer just regulating markets … it’s actively partnering with private companies to win an existential race.

You can call it state-sponsored capitalism. You can call it mercantilism 2.0. Alex Karp, one of the primary architects of this new reality, calls it the Technological Republic.

The label doesn’t really matter.

What matters is when the government decides it can’t afford to lose, it stops debating and starts building.

That’s what we’re watching right now.

The United States is doing what it has always done at pivotal moments in history: mobilizing private industry, clearing regulatory roadblocks, funding winners, and setting hard deadlines to achieve a strategic goal.

That’s how we won the race to the atomic bomb.

That’s how we beat the Soviets to the Moon.

And that’s how we’re now responding to China’s push for AI dominance.

By naming its partners and moving money, the government has made its priorities clear. At moments like this, the market rewards understanding how the system works, and positioning yourself before the execution phase begins.

The only real question for your financial future is whether you’re positioned while the window is still open…

The End of the “Free ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½” Fantasy

For decades, the prevailing wisdom in Washington was that the government should set fair rules and then get out of the way. The “invisible hand” would guide capital to its most efficient use.

Well, it turns out the invisible hand loves cheap labor in China and doesn’t care about national security. When you let the market decide, you end up with a hollowed-out industrial base and an adversary that controls 90% of the critical minerals needed to build the future.

The new administration, backed by the “Hard Power” axis of Peter Thiel, JD Vance, and Alex Karp, has looked at that reality and said: “To hell with the invisible hand. We’re using the iron fist.”

We are no longer in a free market, but a “Command Economy for National Survival.”

In this new system, the government doesn’t seize the means of production like some Soviet cosplayer. Instead, the government directs the means of production. It picks the winners based on one simple criterion: Does this company help America achieve undeniable, durable dominance in AI?

If the answer is “yes,” that company gets deregulation, subsidized capital, and the full diplomatic and military weight of the U.S. government clearing its path.

If the answer is “no,” enjoy your antitrust lawsuit.

You saw the tech CEOs trooping to Washington last year to “bend the knee.” More than just a photo op, that was the signing of a new social contract….

Silicon Valley agreed to stop building useless consumer hedonism and start building the Arsenal of Democracy 2.0.

In exchange, Washington agreed to stop pretending it cares about environmental reviews that take five years to approve a power line.

The result is a merger of State and Tech that would make a 19th-century railroad baron blush.

Geopolitics as Supply Chain Management

If you want to understand why the world looks so crazy right now, stop looking at it through the lens of foreign policy and start looking at it through the lens of supply chain management.

The Technological Republic has an insatiable hunger. It needs three things to build the AI godhead: Infinite Energy, Infinite Raw Materials, and Infinite Compute. It is currently starving for all three.

Exhibit A: Venezuela. Do you think the operation on Jan. 3 was because America’s heart suddenly bled for the plight of Caracas? Please.

The math is simple. We are trying to build AI clusters that require 5 Gigawatts of power – the equivalent of five nuclear reactors – per campus. We need that power tomorrow. We cannot build nuclear plants fast enough. Solar panels are a joke at that scale.

We needed the world’s largest proven oil and gas reserves brought back online, under American management (hello, Chevron), to crash the price of energy and provide the bridge fuel for the AI buildout.

Exhibit B: Greenland. Why is the administration suddenly threatening to buy (or “liberate”) Greenland? Because China choked off the supply of Dysprosium and Terbium last October. You cannot build high-performance electric motors for humanoid robots or advanced wind turbines without them. Guess who has them? Greenland. And if the “Technological Republic” needs them? Well, that’s the end of the discussion.

This is the new reality.

The U.S. military and diplomatic corps are now effectively the procurement department for “Project Stargate”: the $500 billion government-backed AI initiative.

Adapt to the New Investment Paradigm… or Die

So, what does this mean for your money?

It means that if your portfolio is still optimized for the 2010s (full of ESG-friendly consumer brands, ad-tech companies, and decentralized crypto-fluff), you are going to get slaughtered.

We’re moving into a new investment environment – one defined by massive, government-backed industrial buildouts. Not slogans or studies but actual construction: data centers, advanced chips, power infrastructure, manufacturing capacity.

And this time, the government isn’t standing on the sidelines. In plain English, the message to industry is simple: Build the most powerful computing infrastructure in history … and do it fast.

The government has essentially told Big Tech: “You have an unlimited budget and a mandate to build the most powerful computing infrastructure in human history. Don’t let anything stop you.”

When unlimited capital chases scarce physical resources, what happens? The prices of those resources go parabolic.

The only way to invest in this environment is to own the choke points. You must own the things that the Technological Republic cannot build its AI without, and which it currently doesn’t have enough of.

We have identified the 6-Layer AI Bottleneck Stack. This is the playbook for the next decade.

1. The Raw Materials Layer (The Dirt)

You can print money, but you cannot print copper. You cannot code lithium. The physical inputs required for this buildout are in terrifyingly short supply. We are facing a 10-million-ton copper deficit over the next decade. The administration knows this. That’s why they are laser-focused on domestic mining and “friend-shoring” resources.

• The Play: Own the western copper, lithium, and uranium narrative. The ground itself is now a strategic asset.

2. The Power Layer (The Electrons)

This is the biggest crisis of them all. AI is an energy vampire. The grid is full. The new paradigm is “pay to play”—Big Tech is being forced to build its own power generation “behind the meter,” bypassing the public grid entirely. The only solution for 24/7, carbon-free, massive-scale power is nuclear.

• The Play: Own the existing nuclear fleet and the fuel cycle. They hold the keys to the only energy source that fits the mission profile.

3. The Infrastructure Layer (The Shell)

We aren’t just plugging new computers into old buildings. A rack of Nvidia Blackwell chips runs so hot it would melt a standard server room. We have to retrofit the entire internet with liquid cooling plumbing. We need new switchgear, new transformers, and massive new physical shells.

• The Play: Own the companies that manage heat and physical power distribution. The “plumbers” of the AI age are about to become kings.

4. The Compute Layer (The Brains)

The bottleneck here has shifted. It’s no longer just about getting a raw GPU. It’s about “packaging”—the incredibly complex process of stitching the GPU and memory together on silicon. Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) is practically the sole provider of this magic. Furthermore, the US government is actively pushing American-designed custom silicon to reduce reliance on generic chips.

• The Play: Own the packaging monopoly and the leaders in US-designed custom silicon.

5. The Memory Layer (The Context)

An AI chip without memory is useless. The new HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) chips are stacked vertically like skyscrapers on a microscopic scale. The manufacturing yield is terrible, and the entire global supply is sold out until 2027.

• The Play: Own the domestic memory producers who have cornered the market on the high-end supply.

6. The Networking Layer (The Nervous System)

When you connect 100,000 GPUs together, copper wires are too slow. You need light. The entire inside of the datacenter is switching from electrical cables to fiber optics and lasers. We are short on the lasers.

• The Play: Own the masters of optical interconnects and low-latency switching.

The Train Is Leaving

Look, I understand why this feels unsettling.

For decades, we were taught that markets move on innovation, consumer demand, and free-market competition alone. That governments regulate… and companies create. That line is blurring fast.

The Technological Republic is here, and it was born out of necessity. If we lose the AI race to China, nothing else matters. So the entire apparatus of the United States is now geared toward one singular goal.

And history is clear on one thing: when the United States decides it cannot afford to lose, ideology takes a back seat to execution.

That’s why the response has been decisive…

The government has named its partners.

It has cleared regulatory obstacles.

It has set hard deadlines.

And it has begun directing a flood of money – trillions of dollars from both private coffers and the public purse – to the six bottlenecks listed above. The government is using a firehose to blast away regulatory hurdles and using its military to secure the supply lines.

In moments like this, the market rewards those who understand what’s happening and position themselves before execution begins.

Which is why, on Jan. 27, I will broadcast a special event to help you get positioned early.

You always have a choice.

You can wait for the headlines, the confirmations, the CNBC segments, and buy after the easy gains are gone.

Or you can recognize this for what it is: a government-led mobilization with a clear timeline, a defined set of partners, and enormous financial consequences for the companies at the center of it.

History shows where the real wealth is created.

So, keep an eye on your inbox leading up to my free broadcast on Jan. 27 – because the countdown has already begun.

It’s time to adapt or die.

Sincerely,

Luke Lango

The post The U.S. Government Just Picked Its Next AI Winners appeared first on InvestorPlace.

These cheap machines were startlingly effective. Drones could be piloted from hundreds of yards away to spot Russian tank positions and relay the coordinates to artillery teams. Other versions carried warheads, turning $350 drones into flying bombs. 

In fact, drones proved so useful that the Ukrainian government soon developed Decree 256, which established the country’s “Army of Drones” project. 

Today, drones have become the main anti-tank weapon in the Russian-Ukrainian war. More than half of the destruction on Ukraine’s front lines is credited to these unmanned machines, and its military uses them by the millions. 

The same concepts are now being used by U.S. forces.  

On January 3, Venezuelan residents reported hearing high-pitched buzzing noises right before major explosions at port facilities and military bases. Though the U.S. military has denied their use, social media videos suggest that the U.S. military used dozens (if not hundreds) of one-way “kamikaze” drones to attack Venezuelan targets while keeping American soldiers out of harm’s way. The assault created a diversion that allowed an American strike team to swoop in and capture Venezuela’s president and his wife. 

source

The success of Operation Absolute Resolve put defense stocks into overdrive. Shares of the defense “primes” rose double digits following America’s intervention in Venezuela, while some smaller firms rose even more. Whether or not you agree with American military intervention, it’s undeniable that these firms will benefit from increased military spending. 

We believe this is only the start. After all, defense primes were built to accept billion-dollar contracts for expensive fighter jets… not hundred-million-dollar orders for $350 drones. Instead, an entirely new generation of companies will emerge to fill this gap. 

That’s why, over the past several weeks, Luke Lango and his team have combed through executive orders, pored over government memos, and spoken with military insiders to identify which companies are best positioned to receive U.S. government funding.  

Their conclusion: It’s an endeavor on the scale of the Manhattan Project or Apollo Program. 

Luke is calling it the “Genesis Mission.” This multiyear effort will see significant investments by the U.S. government in drone technologies and other critical areas. He identifies six core sectors that stand to gain: 

• Artificial Intelligence 
• Quantum Computing 
• Nuclear Energy 
• Biotech 
• Semiconductors 
• Advanced Manufacturing 

He will go into more detail on Tuesday, January 27, where he will reveal more about the eight stocks in his Genesis Portfolio that focus on these sectors. (He’ll also tell us some about several privately held companies benefiting from the federal government’s new focus as well.) 

Watch your inbox on Tuesday for a direct link to Luke’s free broadcast. 

To illustrate the types of companies he’s eyeing, I’d like to revisit three of my picks from previous InvestorPlace Digest updates that illustrate why investing in smaller innovative firms is so important for long-term success. 

A Promising Drone Startup 

Last October, I highlighted Ondas Holdings Inc. (ONDS), a fast-growing provider of industrial wireless networks and commercial drones. It was the first company to receive certification by the Federal Aviation Administration for an automated aerial security drone and has continued to innovate with new products. 

Most importantly, the West Palm Beach, Florida-based firm is behind a new “predator drone” system that targets other drones. Using a radar-guided system, Ondas’ experimental product locks onto other drones and fires a ballistic net at its target. A parachute then safely lowers the enemy drone to the ground. 

This is a surprisingly useful innovation, because it would be madness to fire a flak cannon at an enemy drone flying near critical infrastructure or friendly units. In fact, there have been multiple reports of Russian forces mistakenly shooting down their own aircraft while attempting to repel Ukrainian drone strikes. 

Ondas solves this problem by using a safer netting system, making it useful near airports, military facilities and public spaces. Shares of the firm have risen 180% since my original article, and there’s likely more room for growth as the firm seeks more bolt-on acquisitions. 

In late November, for instance, Ondas announced it would acquire Roboteam, a startup involved in developing tactical ground robotics. They aim to create unmanned ground vehicles can be used for explosives ordinance disposal (EOD), route clearance, logistics support, and more. Ondas’ know-how in secure wireless communications should help this team succeed. 

In addition, Ondas raised $1 billion earlier in January at an excellent valuation of $16.45 per share. This stock-and-warrant offering will help fund an enormous amount of production growth, and management now expects $175 million in revenues in 2026 – a 165% increase from 2025 levels. 

These are the types of investments that even conservative investors like me tend to appreciate. The company has a rapidly growing backlog (which provides real revenues), and analysts are projecting positive EBITDA profits as soon as 2027. 

The Biotech Wonders 

Meanwhile, not every U.S. innovation will involve the military. In fact, Wall Street’s recent focus on defense companies means that some of Luke’s other six sectors have been completely ignored. 

Here, my favorite sector is biotech, an area that investors often ignore due to its perceived risk. 

In fact, one of my favorite biotech bets, Greenwich LifeSciences Inc. (GLSI) has already jumped 200% since I called the stock a “Buy” last November. The firm’s flagship therapy previously showed compelling results in its Phase IIb and initial Phase III trials, making it an unusually safer bet for a successful Phase III finale. (I write “safer” becasue there’s no such thing as a sure bet in biotech until regulators give the final seal of approval.) 

However, as big bets go… that award goes to two companies developing gene-editing platforms — a technology I believe will power the next generation of innovative drugs. 

My top pick here is Crispr Therapeutics AG (CRSP), a company founded by the inventors of the “scissors” used by most gene-editing firms. The Swiss company lands among my Top 8 picks for 2026, and shares have already risen 5% since I recommended it several short weeks ago. It is the only gene-editing firm with an approved product on the market, and I expect Crispr’s sickle cell therapy to become a billion-dollar blockbuster in the coming years. 

My other bet in this space is Intellia Therapeutics Inc. (NTLA), a riskier firm that was forced to pause a clinical trial in October after a patient experienced severe liver injury. Unlike Crispr, Intellia does not have an approved product on the market yet. 

However, its smaller starting size (its market cap is less than a third of CRSP’s) and 100% ownership of a separate drug, NTLA-2002, give it far greater upside if things go well. Shares rose as much as 147% when I first highlighted it as a potential 1,000% winner last September, and even its clinical trial pause has left its stock 33% higher since last year. 

The U.S. government is now lending a helping hand to the industry.  

In November, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) unveiled a new regulatory roadmap that should turbocharge the development of gene-editing drugs, especially for rarer genetic disorders. Under new rules, drugs that target rarer disorders (or those that must be customized for individual users) may skip large-scale clinical trials entirely.  

This would be game-changing, because it’s often impossible to recruit enough people to run a traditional large-scale trial. In fact, traditional clinical trials are impossible if you only have one patient. 

That’s why I believe CRSP and NTLA continue to have incredible upside. The U.S. government is starting to uncork innovation in other areas besides AI, and companies like ONDS, CRSP, and NTLA should benefit as a direct result. 

The Genesis Portfolio 

Those who follow Luke Lango will know how he’s recommended dozens of innovative stocks long before they hit mainstream media. He’s identified companies like: 

• Celestica Inc. (CLS): +264% since March 2025 
• BWX Technologies Inc (BWXT): +143% since February 2024 
• Palantir Technologies Inc. (PLTR): +971% since June 2023 

These three particular stocks count the U.S. government as a key customer.  

• Celestica is a crucial supplier of the electronic components found in aircraft, ships, and unmanned vehicles.  
• Micro nuclear reactor firm BWXT was recently awarded a $1.6 billion contract to produce high-purity depleted uranium for national defense purposes.  
• And Palantir provides software that helps the U.S. military make AI-powered predictions. 

That’s put these firms on hypergrowth tracks. In fact, Palantir is expected to grow another 53% this year, thanks to insatiable demand for its AI-powered data analysis. 

This isn’t the first time the U.S. government has intervened in American industry. During the First and Second World Wars, the federal government coordinated the production of steel, rail, trains, and other critical military inputs. The 1960s Space Race created a whole generation of aerospace tech firms, while the 2008 financial crisis prompted direct government investment in banks, airlines, and carmakers. 

Now, we’re seeing another concerted effort by the government to remake American businesses. Billions of dollars will get injected into certain companies.  

And for those seeking an insight into which firms will receive this windfall, watch your inbox on Tuesday, January 27. That’s when we’ll be sending you a direct link to Luke’s free Genesis Mission presentation. 

I’ll see you back here next week. 

Thomas Yeung, CFA 

ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ Analyst, InvestorPlace 

Thomas Yeung is a market analyst and portfolio manager of the Omnia Portfolio, the highest-tier subscription at InvestorPlace. He is the former editor of Tom Yeung’s Profit & Protection, a free e-letter about investing to profit in good times and protecting gains during the bad.

The post 3 Startups Leading American Innovation… and 8 More in the Wings appeared first on InvestorPlace.

The era of Pax Americana is ending, replaced by something far more transactional. Investors who still believe U.S. power is about policing the world may be missing the real story: Washington is no longer protecting assets … it’s acquiring them.

From oil fields to rare earths to drones, a new strategy is taking shape, one driven by political survival and inflation control. The proof is already visible in a proposed $500 billion surge in defense spending and a sharp pivot toward next-generation warfare.

Which is why this Tuesday, January 27, I’ll be hosting a special broadcast — focused on the most important government-backed investment setup of 2026 … the “Genesis Mission,” and the short window investors have to act before execution begins.

To understand why the Genesis Mission matters so much (and why the government is moving with such urgency), you have to zoom out…

The Genesis Mission

Washington’s old laissez-faire approach – letting the “invisible hand” of the market rule – hollowed out key industries and left the nation dependent on geopolitical rivals for vital materials. 

No more. 

In response, Washington is bringing a very visible hand to bear.

This pivot is government-led and mission-driven. U.S. leadership has essentially declared: If a company or asset is essential to American dominance in artificial intelligence and other strategic technologies, it will be supported, fast-tracked, even subsidized. 

If not, it may find itself in the crosshairs. The focus now is on hard power and supply-chain security rather than global policing or abstract free-market ideals. 

We saw early hints of this shift when U.S. officials talked about buying Greenland for its rare earth minerals, or when America imposed sweeping export bans to choke off China’s access to advanced chips. 

Recently, it became unmistakable: the U.S. is willing to intervene, invest, and even bend rules to obtain what it needs … from energy reserves to semiconductor factories. 

Economic ideology has taken a back seat to execution. What matters is ensuring America controls the resources and innovations required to win the 21st-century tech race.

Crucially, this new philosophy has now been formalized under a landmark initiative known as the “Genesis Mission.” 

In late 2025, the U.S. government launched the Genesis Mission as a coordinated national effort akin to the Manhattan Project or Apollo Program. Its goal is simple and audacious: achieve undeniable, durable U.S. dominance in AI and high-impact technologies. 

It’s a modern-day moonshot for American innovation and security. The Genesis Mission brings together federal muscle, top scientists, and leading corporations in a united front. 

The Department of Energy, defense agencies, universities, and tech firms are partnering to pour unprecedented resources into AI research, supercomputing infrastructure, chip manufacturing, quantum science, biotechnology – whatever it takes to secure the country’s technological leadership. 

The White House explicitly frames this as a Manhattan Project-scale endeavor, underscoring the urgency and ambition behind it. In practical terms, it means fast-tracking projects and tearing down barriers: regulatory hurdles are being bulldozed, red tape cut, and timelines accelerated by government decree. 

We are watching the merger of state and industry interests on a scale not seen in generations – what Palantir’s (PLTR) CEO Alex Karp has evocatively called the rise of a “Technological Republic,” where the state directs capital and innovation toward a supreme objective.

Make no mistake, this is economic mobilization for national survival. If America “can’t afford to lose” the AI race, as leaders openly state, then policies will be crafted to make sure it doesn’t lose. Ideology and free-market orthodoxy are subordinated to that mission. 

The U.S. government has effectively named its winners – the sectors and companies crucial to the Genesis Mission – and is channeling vast sums their way. Trillions of dollars from public programs and private capital are being mobilized to build out AI superclusters, domestic supply chains, and next-generation networks. 

Energy independence and dominance are being pursued with the same zeal: consider the sudden priority on opening new oil and gas supplies and ramping up advanced energy tech – all to fuel power-hungry AI systems. 

In this light, formerly unthinkable moves (like intervening in a foreign energy industry or spending like it’s wartime) start to make strategic sense. It’s all part of Genesis Mission America – a nation retooling its entire economy for a high-stakes technology showdown.

Why This Matters for Investors Now

For investors, this sea change in policy translates into a new market paradigm – and a narrow window of opportunity. When the government directs the economy toward a goal of this magnitude, the winners and losers in the market get reshuffled. 

We’re already seeing it. The old playbook of the 2010s – favoring consumer tech, apps, and decentralized novelties – is being replaced by an emphasis on strategic industries and “hard tech.” 

Companies that help fortify the nation’s tech arsenal are being propelled forward, while those deemed non-essential or hindrances could find themselves facing stricter regulation or antitrust scrutiny. 

In short, the capital is flowing into AI, defense, and infrastructure … and out of frivolities. Investors who don’t adjust will get “slaughtered” by the new realities.

The Genesis Mission is creating clear winners: firms providing the choke-point resources and capabilities the U.S. needs to achieve tech supremacy. 

Think of businesses supplying high-performance semiconductors, critical minerals for batteries and chips, cutting-edge AI software, secure cloud and supercomputing services, advanced defense systems, and energy technologies to power it all. These are now priority assets. 

When Washington effectively tells Big Tech and industry, “You have an unlimited budget and a mandate … build the most powerful AI infrastructure in history, and don’t let anything stop you,” that is a tidal wave of money and support coming their way. 

But it also means bottlenecks – like lithium, rare earth metals, high-end chips, uranium, even specialized manufacturing equipment – are poised to skyrocket in value. Whenever unlimited capital chases scarce resources, the price of those resources goes parabolic. 

Astute investors will position themselves in those choke points of the supply chain … the indispensable inputs and producers that the new Technological Republic cannot function without. Those are the stocks with potential to multiply as the Genesis Mission unfolds.

History has shown that the market rewards those who understand such strategic inflection points early. In the 1940s, only a prescient few noticed that obscure chemical and engineering companies were getting secretive government contracts … and bought in before the Manhattan Project’s purpose became obvious. 

In the 1960s, those who recognized that massive federal spending on rockets and computing was not folly but the Apollo Program laying groundwork for new industries were able to ride the coming boom in aerospace and semiconductors.

In each case, once the headlines confirmed the success – an atomic bomb, a Moon landing – the easy gains had already been made by investors who saw the trend in advance. 

Today, we stand at a similar crossroads. The U.S. has hit the “hard reset” button on its economy to win the only game that truly matters: the race for advanced AI and ultimately Artificial Superintelligence. The Genesis Mission is still in its early innings … That means right now, the window is still open for investors to get in on the ground floor of this historic mobilization.

Timing is critical. Every week, new policy moves and funding commitments are rolling out: subsidies for chip fabs here, Department of Energy grants for AI research there, Pentagon contracts for next-gen computing and weapons systems. 

Once these initiatives are fully public and the mainstream financial media trumpets the “AI Manhattan Project” underway, the opportunity for outsized profits will start to shrink. The market will have woken up and bid these strategic asset plays much higher. 

That’s why this moment – before Genesis Mission dominates front-page news – is so crucial. Investors who act now, repositioning portfolios into the sectors and companies aligned with America’s 21st-century mission, stand to benefit the most. We are talking about a narrow window in which to stake claims in the future pillars of American dominance.

The Government Wave Is Coming

The bottom line: a massive government-driven wave is about to sweep through the markets, rewarding those who own what the nation needs and punishing those clinging to yesterday’s priorities. It’s both educational and urgent to recognize this. 

Just as a new Apollo-era investor had to adapt or die, today’s investor must pivot to this Genesis Mission paradigm or risk being left on the sidelines. 

Our Genesis Mission broadcast will go live this Tuesday, January 27.

There’s no registration and no link to hunt down. If you’re a subscriber, you’ll get all the details directly through your regular Hypergrowth Investing issue in the days to come — including how to watch as soon as it goes live.

The U.S. government has effectively drawn a new roadmap for where innovation and capital will flow. 

Follow that roadmap, and you align yourself with perhaps the most powerful economic force in the world: a national mission with every incentive to succeed. 

Miss it, and no amount of hindsight will make up for the lost opportunity. 

The message for investors is clear: understand the Genesis Mission, get positioned in its path, and do it now – while the rest of the world is still waking up to the new reality.

I’ll see you Tuesday. 

The post How to Profit From the Government-Backed AI Moonshot appeared first on InvestorPlace.

The Northeast Greenland National Park is a stunning place.

It is the world’s largest national park, covering 375,000 square miles of ancient rock formations, beautiful shorelines, and a mountain range with 126 named peaks. 

That said, few people actually get to see these natural wonders. The region has no roads, no permanent residents, and just 500 visitors a year – mostly on cruise ships passing through.

The average annual temperature at Petermann Peak (in the eastern side of the park) is only 3 degrees Fahrenheit, making the mountain far more attractive in photos than in person.

Miners face the same issue.

One project on the northeast coast, a massive zinc deposit named Citronen Fjord, is only accessible by sea for around 12 weeks of the year when sea ice is at its thinnest.

An optimistic feasibility study in 2021 pegged costs at around $0.76 per pound of zinc extracted – 50% higher than what it currently costs Teck Resources Ltd. (TECK) to dig up the metal in Alaska. Inland rare earth mining in Greenland will face even steeper challenges.

So, are the president’s statements that Greenland “has to be acquired” an issue of securing resources? After all, perhaps the White House is thinking decades into the future, when easier-to-access mines and oil wells have run dry.

Or is it a way to force other NATO countries to step up military spending?

We’re not making any guesses, because only one person has that answer (and even he might not fully know). Earlier this week, the president announced a “framework” of a deal with NATO that offered few concrete details.

However, there is one clear outcome from this global drama…

The U.S. dollar will become less attractive to anyone abroad.

And even as headline geopolitical tensions cool, the underlying pressures on the greenback remain.

So, in today’s Smart Money, I’ll share how declining global confidence in the U.S. dollar – driven by geopolitical tensions and a slowing U.S. economy – could trigger further depreciation.

We’ll look into what a dollar decline means for investors like us.

Then, I’ll share how you can reduce dollar dependence in your portfolio in order to stay ahead of a potential continued slide.

Let’s dive in…

Why the World Is Turning Away From the Dollar

Tourists… exporters… traders… savers…

If you’re living in Europe right now, there’s very little reason to buy U.S. dollars if you can avoid it. If a trade war between the U.S. and the European Union flares up again, no corporate treasury manager wants to have dollars that they no longer need.

Central bankers feel the same pressures.

The dollar’s share of central bank reserves around the world has fallen to just 40%, down from 60% a decade ago. On-again/off-again antagonism from the U.S. does not breed confidence in its assets.

That’s creating a downward draft on American currency.

If investors and central bankers expect the dollar to depreciate further, they will liquidate what dollars they can, creating a self-perpetuating cycle that sends values lower.

Unlike stocks (where low prices make them more attractive), depreciating currencies are generally less attractive because falling exchange rates typically reflect weakening demand. One study found that investors can generate up to 10% annual returns through buying strengthening currencies and selling weakening ones.

In addition, a falling dollar could force the U.S. Federal Reserve to cut rates by more than the one to two times (0.25% to 0.50%) that futures markets currently expect.

Not only is the president expected to nominate a relatively dovish Federal Reserve chairman to replace Jerome Powell once his term ends in May, but Eric is also predicting that net employment growth turns negative as AI begins to cut demand for entry-level hiring, customer support staff, junior analysts, and back-office roles. 

That would force the Fed to cut rates to cushion the fall, making the U.S. dollar even less attractive to foreign investors. 

The result is decidedly negative for the U.S. dollar, which already fell 10% last year. 

Here’s why it’s so important to prepare for a potential rout in the greenback…

The Payoff of Dollar Weakness

The effect of dollar depreciation quickly becomes clear when you compare U.S. stock performance against assets that do not depend on our domestic currency.

Here’s how a selection of such assets performed in 2025 (when the dollar depreciated 10%) compared to the S&P 500…

• S&P 500: +14.2%
• Japan – iShares MSCI Japan ETF (EWJ): +27.2%
• Copper: +33.5%
• International Stocks – iShares MSCI ACWI ex US ETF (ACWX): +34.5%
• Brazil – iShares MSCI Brazil ETF (EWZ): +42.9%
• Gold: +75.4%

We saw a similar effect in the 2000s, when the dollar index fell from 120 at the end of 2001 to just 74 at the end of 2007, a 38% decline.

Over that period, the rise of dollar-protected assets was so startling that it created a “new normal” in ways to invest. This included the popularization of emerging market stocks, real estate, energy, and commodities. 

Few people then talked about the “depreciating dollar”… yet virtually everyone changed their investing behavior anyway.

There’s a good chance that 2026 will see another year of dollar depreciation, driven by factors like Greenland and a slowing U.S. jobs market.

So, even though tensions in the Arctic are cooling off, be sure to add to your dollar-independent positions as we head further into 2026. 

Eric recommends several of these positions in his Fry’s Investment Report service, including copper play Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (FCX), which is currently up over 250% in the portfolio.

He also recommends several foreign stocks that can deliver an extra layer of returns if/when the dollar depreciates.

So, once again, be sure to diversify your holdings. You can learn the best way to do so by clicking here.

Regards,

Thomas Yeung, CFA  

ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ Analyst, InvestorPlace 

P.S. One quick heads-up…

My InvestorPlace colleague Luke Lango has a major free broadcast coming Tuesday, January 27. And it’s centered on what he believes could be the single biggest government-backed investing opportunity of 2026. 

So, be sure to watch your inbox that morning for a direct link.

If you’ve ever wanted to get positioned before Wall Street catches on, you won’t want to miss this.

The post Greenland Headlines Fade… but the ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ Risk Doesn’t appeared first on InvestorPlace.

The first thing I noticed was his breathing.

Shallow. Rapid. Almost panicked.

Then his hands – gripping the armrests so tightly I wondered if he might tear them loose.

He kept shifting in his seat, glancing at his watch every few seconds, as if time itself were the enemy.

Millions of Americans display the same telltale signs – tight shoulders, nervous fidgeting, racing thoughts – as they prepare to do something that fills them with dread.

You may feel it yourself.

I’m talking about flying.

For many people, boarding a plane feels like taking an enormous risk. Their heart rate spikes. Their palms sweat. Every bump of turbulence feels ominous.

And yet, here’s the strange part.

Those same people think nothing of driving to the airport—merging onto highways, sharing the road with distracted drivers, speeding trucks, and unpredictable traffic.

Statistically, that drive is far more dangerous than the flight itself.

According to the National Safety Council, more than 44,000 lives were lost in traffic crashes in 2023. By contrast, the National Transportation Safety Board reports just 188 fatalities from commercial aviation incidents in 2025.

Flying isn’t risky at all. It just feels risky.

And that distinction – between what feels dangerous and what actually is – explains why so many investors miss their biggest opportunities.

Because in markets, just like in life, we don’t avoid risk.

We avoid discomfort.

And waiting until something “feels” comfortable often turns out to be the riskiest decision of all.

Why Waiting Feels Safe – But Isn’t

The moments that feel safest are usually the ones where most of the upside is already gone. My colleague Jeff Remsburg highlighted this in the Digest on Thursday.

Jeff cited a Research Affiliates study showing that market dominance is often the start of underperformance, not the reward for past success.

The takeaway from their study was simple: once a company reaches the summit of market cap dominance, the forces acting against it begin to multiply.

Expectations soar. Scrutiny intensifies. Competitors sharpen their knives.

And what once looked like unstoppable momentum turns into a battle just to justify today’s valuation.

Waiting until a stock pick feels comfortable can leave you with a portfolio of underperformers.

It’s the moments that feel uncertain – when the evidence is there, but the outcome isn’t guaranteed – that are the moments when people tend to talk themselves out of acting.

The risk isn’t any different. But it feels less comfortable.

One of the advantages of watching markets for a long time is learning to recognize those uncomfortable moments for what they are.

Luke Lango has built his career around that exact skill – spotting inflection points before they become consensus trades.

It feels like a long time ago, but it was just over three years ago, in November 2022, when ChatGPT was revealed to the world. Here is what Luke wrote just days later…

From a financial perspective, ChatGPT represents the technical beginning of a multi-trillion-dollar AI Revolution that will fundamentally reshape the global economy.

ChatGPT can already tutor and educate students on any subject in an on-demand, step-by-step fashion. I’m not saying ChatGPT is ready to replace all teachers today. But I am saying that AI software will certainly have a profound impact on the education sector over the next decade.

That’s a $10 trillion market. AI will reshape it.

ChatGPT can also probably fix code better than most coders these days. It’s only a matter of years before it can write code better than most, too.

The global software market is marching toward a $1 trillion valuation. AI will reshape that industry, too.

All content creation is moving toward automation. Altogether, we’re talking trillions of dollars being disrupted in those industries.

Long before artificial intelligence became a daily headline, Luke was urging subscribers to pay attention to the early building blocks behind it.

One manifestation of the AI boom is what Luke calls “Physical AI”, otherwise known as robotics. Back in 2022, Luke noted that robotics would be the future of the supply chain. Here is what he wrote then:

The best way to reduce labor costs is to cut them and the best way to cut them is through robots. Robots don’t need salaries. They don’t need benefits, health or dental insurance. They don’t need to sleep or take lunch breaks. They don’t take vacations, and they don’t quit.

To that end, a capable robot can do as much work as a whole team of manual workers at a fraction of the cost and with a much higher degree of reliability. They are the solution that companies need to localize their supply chains without bloating costs. And in 2022, that need is huge.

Luke recommended the promising robotics start-up Symbotic (SYM), which isup almost 300% since then.

The opportunity appeared first as an idea that felt uncertain. Then, gradually, as something that felt inevitable. If you weren’t willing to get in early, some of the biggest gains were already behind you.

That history matters – not because it guarantees outcomes, but because it highlights a discipline most investors struggle to maintain: acting when the evidence is forming, not after the crowd has arrived.

Now, Luke is tracking another early opportunity. It’s a $500 billion government mobilization that officially launched on November 24th.

Its goals are to:

• Use AI to accelerate energy advancements
• Invest in a quantum ecosystem for scientific breakthroughs, and
• Develop AI for national security

It explicitly compares itself to the Manhattan Project and the Apollo Program – both huge government programs that made savvy investors wealthy.

When the government threw its financial weight around like this before, companies like DuPont and Boeing delivered gains of 1,844% and 24,400% respectively. This time, 52 companies have been named to win the AI race against China, with hard deadlines starting February 22nd.

These companies are not household names. Instead, they are small companies in quantum computing, nuclear energy, and advanced semiconductors.

Luke has spent two months analyzing this opportunity, and he has the names for your portfolio, which he’ll highlight in a new briefing on Tuesday, January 27.

Luke is unveiling a brand-new free Genesis Mission broadcast — and it’s focused on the next major catalyst tied to AI, national security, and U.S. industry.

I’d strongly recommend watching it as soon as it hits your inbox… this is the kind of event investors talk about after the window closes.

Investing in small names might “feel” riskier, but really, the risk is the same. Investing when it feels uncomfortable can often lead to the biggest gains.

Enjoy your weekend,

Luis Hernandez

Editor in Chief, InvestorPlace

P.S. Want a powerful edge over the market?

Last week, TradeSmith CEO Keith Kaplan revealed the latest innovation from his team of researchers at a special event, Prediction 2026

Keith detailed the newest advancements in the Trade Cycles Seasonality tool. It highlights the strongest seasonal trends for stocks, indexes, currencies, commodities and more, with starting points narrowed down to the day!

You can still check out the replay of our Prediction 2026 event right here.

The post Why Playing It Safe Can Be the Riskiest Move appeared first on InvestorPlace.

Meteorologists say it could sprawl across multiple regions of the country – not as a quick burst of snow that’s gone by morning, but a wide, slow-moving system capable of laying down snow, ice and freezing temperatures over several days.

Source: NBC News

These are the types of storms that cause the most damage.

Not because they look frightening at first, but because they change conditions gradually until suddenly travel becomes impossible, power goes out and normal movement grinds to a halt.

In situations like this, the most important decisions have to be made before any of that happens. Because once the roads are iced over, it’s too late.

ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½s work the same way.

Despite all the distractions and international shocks, markets have remained resilient to start the year.

At first glance, that feels reassuring. But what matters most right now isn’t how the market looks on the surface. It’s what’s happening underneath…

That’s why, in today’s ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ 360, I want to walk you through what’s changing beneath the surface – and why understanding this change matters right now.

The Latest ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ Distraction

The bond vigilantes wreaked havoc on the stock market earlier this week.

As you may know, there’s been an uproar surrounding President Trump’s demands to buy Greenland from Denmark. He initially threatened increased tariffs on U.S. allies in his quest to gain control of Greenland for national security reasons.

The bond vigilantes (i.e., big institutional investors, insurance companies and sovereign wealth funds) don’t like all the tension between the U.S. and our NATO allies over the Greenland situation. So, they used the diplomatic chaos as an opportunity to drive global bond yields higher.

In turn, all of the major indices sold off hard on Tuesday, with the S&P 500 falling 2% and the Dow dropping 1.8%.

Trump’s later reassurance that the U.S. would not use force to acquire Greenland and his about-face on the tariff threats assuaged most folks’ concerns. So, the stock market erased the majority of its losses by the end of the week.

Now, I have consistently said since January of last year that Trump 2.0 would be about bold, transformative policies. But what’s important to remember is that Trump’s negotiating style often catches people off guard.

He makes big demands, issues threats, talks to the media and posts on social media – all in the effort to make his adversaries uncomfortable.

Ultimately, when a compromise “deal” is announced, it’s likely closer to the goal his administration had in mind all along.

That was the case with the reciprocal tariffs back in April 2025, and it’s the same case this time around with Greenland.  

But the bottom line is that these are nothing less than market distractions, folks. In fact, there is something much more important happening beneath the surface that you need to be know about…

What’s Happening Beneath the Surface

Back on January 8, I shared a chart depicting “The Lost Decade”.

From, 2000 to 2009, it was the period where stocks essentially flatlined.

I also warned that we’re in danger of the same thing happening again.

As I explained, a handful of mega-cap companies are carrying an outsized influence over the market – and investor’s portfolios. And if any sign of stagnation appears with these names, then investors would be wise to look elsewhere.

Here’s what I mean…

FactSet estimates that the S&P 500 will likely achieve average earnings growth of more than 14% for the fourth quarter. But in the chart below, you can clearly see how the Magnificent Seven stocks – Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta Platforms, and Tesla – are expected to do most of the heavy lifting…  

Now, as I said back then, I am not calling for a “crash” in these stocks.

But the fact is that Magnificent Seven stocks now represent an outsized share of major indexes and retirement portfolios.

Many investors don’t realize just how concentrated their exposure has become. We’re talking about $21 trillion in market capitalization – or roughly one third of the S&P 500.

They believe they’re diversified, but in reality, they’re making the same bet over and over again.

My question is simply this: What happens when growth begins to slow at these massive companies?

It creates what I call a “Hidden Crash”.

Even modest underperformance from a couple of these stocks can drag the entire market down.

It won’t happen overnight. When they stop growing fast enough, they act like anchors instead of engines, causing portfolios to tread water at best – or slowly sink over time.

Where to Find the Next ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ Leaders

Just like with this weekend’s winter storm, the issue isn’t a lack of warnings. It’s that most people don’t act until conditions deteriorate.

ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½s are no different. That’s why avoiding stagnation is only the first step.

Because pretty soon, a good portion of that $21 trillion will go looking for growth elsewhere.

In cycles like this, the stocks that benefit most tend to operate at the edges of major economic shifts. They sit deep inside supply chains. They solve critical problems that the giants cannot efficiently handle themselves.

I call these companies Edge Innovators.

These are not the household names everyone already owns. They are the companies supplying the infrastructure that makes the next phase of the AI Revolution possible. The chips. The systems. The networks. The specialized technology Big Tech must buy, whether profits rise or fall.

And right now, that spending is exploding.

We are in the middle of the largest infrastructure buildout in modern American history. Roughly $2.8 trillion is flowing into artificial intelligence, data centers, advanced computing and digital networks.

That money does not stay inside the tech giants. It flows outward to the companies building the backbone of this new economy.

The fact is, though, most investors have no idea about these stocks. And that is where opportunity lies…

Why This Matters Right Now

Just like with the winter storm moving across the country right now, the most important decisions are made before conditions force your hand.

By the time everyone else reacts, the damage is already done.

That’s why I put together a special presentation on this “Hidden Crash”.

In it, I break down the warning signs most investors never see – the quiet earnings weakness, the growing concentration risk, and the early rotation happening beneath the surface of the market.

More importantly, I show you where that money is actually going.

Not into the same seven stocks everyone already owns, but into a small group of Edge Innovators positioned to benefit directly from the next phase of AI and infrastructure spending – without carrying Big Tech valuations or Big Tech risk.

I walk through the framework I’m using to identify these companies, explain why a handful are already pulling away from the pack, and reveal my top Edge Innovator pick – ticker symbol and all.

If you haven’t watched the presentation yet, I strongly encourage you to do so now.

Sincerely,

Louis

P.S. One last thing…

On Tuesday, January 27, my InvestorPlace colleague Luke Lango will host a free Genesis Mission broadcast about a major new catalyst tied to AI, national security and U.S. industry.

Your link will be sent directly by email. I strongly recommend watching it as soon as it hits your inbox because, as we talked about today, the advantage comes from being early, not reactive.

The post A Quiet Storm Is Brewing in the ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ – Here’s How to Prepare (Before It’s Too Late) appeared first on InvestorPlace.

Wall Street’s pretending this geopolitical tumult is business as usual. And to some extent, that’s true; every time global power tilts, markets convulse.

But beneath the noise, there’s always a deeper reordering of the system – where new technologies, new alliances, and new money flows decide who thrives and who gets wiped out.

That’s exactly what’s happening right now. 

The “experts” are telling us this is the Roaring ’20s all over again. But look at your grocery bill or the job market… 

Our friends – educated, skilled, mid-career professionals – have been “open to work” on LinkedIn for nine months, with zero callbacks.

The headlines say boom. The reality feels like a bust.

For the last two years, I’ve warned that something was breaking in the engine room of the global economy. I’ve said that the old rules – work hard, save 10%, buy a house, retire at 65 – were dissolving.

Today, I’m not here to warn you. I’m here to tell you it’s over.

We have officially entered a new economic epoch, something academics call “structural adjustment” and doomers call “collapse.”

I call it CHAOS Economics. 

In this new world, there are only two types of people: the serfs who work for the algorithm, and the lords who own it. 

We are staring down the barrel of an AI-driven Engels’ Pause – an era when GDP rises but workers’ purchasing power remains flat as capitalists’ profits soar. 

To put it bluntly, the Titanic has already hit the iceberg. And, much like on the Titanic, the band is still playing and the cocktails are still being served in first class – but the water is rising in steerage.

If you want to survive, it’s time to board the lifeboat…

The iceberg didn’t appear overnight. It’s been building for years, hidden below the surface. 

Here’s what it looks like.

How AI Automation Creates Job Loss: The Two Forces Driving CHAOS Economics

We are witnessing the collision of two unstoppable forces moving in opposite directions.

Force 1: AI, the Deflationary Tsunami 

Artificial intelligence is the single greatest deflationary force in human history; the ultimate cost-cutter. 

We might have once expected robots to replace assembly line workers – and that’s still coming. Tech titans Amazon (AMZN), Tesla (TSLA), and China’s BYD have said they aim to use humanoid robots in their operations. Most recently, Hyundai – in partnership with Boston Dynamics – unveiled its humanoid robot, Atlas, designed to “ease physical strain on human workers” and “pave the way for wider use of the technology.” In our view, that’s corporate speak for “replace human workers”…

But right now, software is the more immediate threat. Before physical bots arrive at scale, AI software is already starting to replace once-high-status jobs: interpreters, proofreaders, code writers, logistics managers.

Microsoft’s late-2025 analysis of AI job exposure depicts a terrifying situation. 

Management analysts, customer service reps, sales engineers… We are talking about 5 million white-collar jobs – the bedrock of the American tax base – facing extinction.

When a company can replace a $120,000-a-year mid-level manager with a $20-a-month subscription to an AI Agent, they don’t think about it. They just do it. It’s their fiduciary duty. This collapses wages and labor demand through Technological Deflation.

Force 2: The Inflationary Response

Here is the paradox. If everyone loses their job, the entire consumer economy collapses.

The government cannot allow a deflationary depression and risk 20%-plus unemployment turning into a revolution. So, it will do the only thing it knows how to do: print money.

The government will print cash by the trillions, calling it “stimulus,” then “relief,” until eventually, it’s just “universal basic income” (UBI).

This is a form of monetary dilution. Economists call this fiscal dominance. I call it Currency Hallowing.

And then comes the death spiral – where more job loss leads to more money printing, which leads to more job loss and more money printing, in an accelerating cycle.

This is CHAOS: Currency Hallowing And Overautomation Spiral.

Prices for things made by AI (software, media, digital entertainment) will crash to near zero. But prices for limited commodities (houses, land, food, energy, healthcare) will skyrocket because the dollar is being debased to fund the unemployed masses.

The result? A society where we have a supercomputer in our pockets, but we can’t afford a steak dinner.

AI Job Displacement Mirrors the Industrial Revolution

“But Luke,” the tech optimists might say. “Technology always creates more jobs than it destroys. Look at the tractor or the loom!“

To which I’d say: you’re ignoring Engels’ Pause, named after Friedrich Engels, the 19th-century economist who documented what happened when the Industrial Revolution collided with labor markets.

Between 1790 and 1840, Great Britain’s GDP growth rate exploded from 0.2% to 3.2% annually. Technology (steam engines) created massive efficiency gains. Corporate profits doubled, increasing by over 20% from the late 18th to the mid-19th century. 

But here’s what Engels noted: while the Industrial Revolution was making Britain incredibly rich, most Brits saw their lives get much worse, not better.

For the average worker, real wages remained flat or fell for 50 years. Workers’ share of the national income dropped from 50% to 45%, even as total wealth soared. And in Manchester and Liverpool, life expectancy for working-class children fell to just 17 years.

The wealth did eventually trickle down… and the Industrial Revolution did eventually lead to more jobs… half a century later.

The weavers who lost their jobs to power looms didn’t become “machine repairmen.” They starved. They rioted and, often, were shot by the military or shipped to penal colonies. It took two full generations for the labor market to adjust.

We are entering an AI-driven Engels’ Pause. But this time it will be faster and more brutal.

The steam engine took a century to deploy. ChatGPT hit 100 million users in two months. We’re compressing 50 years of displacement into a single decade.

And the disruption isn’t just coming for low-skill manual labor this time. It’s coming for the accountant, the lawyer, the editor… It’s coming for you.

Government Won’t Stop AI Job Loss: The Political Race to AGI

By now you’re probably thinking: But won’t the government step in to regulate AI and protect Americans’ jobs? 

Well, Washington is stepping in – just not in the way most people think.

The current administration controls the levers of power, and its platform can be summarized in three words: Go, Baby, Go.

The administration’s ‘One Rule’ executive order requires agencies to eliminate one regulation for every new rule imposed. It preempts state AI safety regulations in California and Colorado, blocking their enforcement. The goal is clear: Remove all friction. Let the companies build and deploy.

The reason? China. The geopolitical reality is that if we slow down to protect jobs, China reaches Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) first. And to Washington, winning the AI Cold War matters infinitely more than your 401(k).

You may have heard murmurings about a new government “AI framework” in development. It’s not about regulation – it’s about acceleration.

Behind the scenes, agencies are being mobilized, budgets rewritten, and industrial plans dusted off for the Genesis Mission: a Manhattan Project-scale initiative to dominate the next wave of AI, nuclear, and advanced manufacturing.

Think of it as a government-backed AI production program, with hard deadlines, big money, and regulatory fast-tracking. And the timing couldn’t be more critical. The ‘framework’ was just announced, with detailed funding priorities expected Feb. 22.

The government has cut the brake lines and is flooring the accelerator because it’s terrified that if it doesn’t, Beijing wins the race to AGI.

This means there will be no meaningful AI regulation or ‘Human Employment Protection Act.’ We are barreling toward the cliff edge of labor obsolescence at maximum velocity, sanctioned by the State.

The Data Proving AI Is Replacing Workers Right Now

Look at the data from late 2025.

The S&P 500 was soaring, with corporate profits at record highs.

Meanwhile… Unemployment has risen to 4.6% – and climbing. Consumer sentiment has collapsed to 51 (on the University of Michigan’s index), nearly matching the all-time low of 50 hit during peak inflation in June 2022. Real wage growth is getting squeezed. And layoff announcements have soared, topping 1.1 million in 2025 – the highest since the COVID-19 pandemic. 

This disconnect – the “Rich Economy, Poor People” vibe – is the iceberg. And we’ve already hit it.

The structural damage is done, and the water is pouring in.

The Old American Dream was built in the steerage class of this ship, on the premise that your labor had inherent, growing value. It assumed that if you showed up and did a good job, the market would reward you with a middle-class life.

But that premise is dead.

In a CHAOS economy, selling your time for money is a losing trade. Your time and the currency you’re paid in are both depreciating in value, faster every quarter. It’s like running on a treadmill spinning backward – and accelerating.

If you stay in the “labor class,” you sink with the ship.

How to Protect Your Job from AI: The Only 3 Investment Strategies That Work

So, what do you do? Curl up and wait for the UBI check that buys you a loaf of bread and a VR headset?

No. If the world is splitting into “techno-feudal lords” and “serfs,” you make damn sure you’re sitting at the high table.

The only way to win in CHAOS Economics is to join the capital class.

This requires a fundamental shift in how you think about money. You cannot save your way out of a currency devaluation spiral. You must think about “owning the machine.”

If AI is stealing jobs, you must own AI companies. If tech giants are capturing GDP, you must own their equity. And if the grid powers everything, you must own the infrastructure.

This isn’t about “diversification” or a nice, balanced 60/40 portfolio. Bonds are garbage in a currency hallowing environment. Cash is trash. Even most stocks are value traps. 

You need a lifeboat. And in 2026, the only seaworthy vessel is high-growth AI equity.

Here’s your survival roadmap:

The Infrastructure

The AI arms race is expensive. It requires chips, data centers, and an unprecedented amount of energy. Nvidia (NVDA), AMD (AMD), and Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM) aren’t just stocks – they’re tolls on the future. Nobody builds the future without paying them. 

But infrastructure goes deeper. AI data centers are ravenous for power – they need baseload energy that solar and wind can’t deliver. Nuclear power plants and utilities providers are the unsexy infrastructure that will power this revolution.

These companies will print money. Own them.

The Sovereigns

Stop looking at Microsoft, Alphabet (GOOGL), Meta (META), and Amazon as companies. They are more like nation-states. Microsoft’s R&D budget exceeds $25 billion annually – larger than NASA’s. They own the data, the customers, and the platforms. 

In a feudal system, you want to be aligned with the strongest king. These companies will survive the CHAOS, swallowing competitors and extracting rents from every transaction in the digital economy. You want equity in their monopolies.

The Agents

This is the “hypergrowth” corner – the highest risk, highest reward tier where 100x returns are possible. Look for software companies building the AI agents that replace $200/hour lawyers and $150/hour architects.

If your profession is being automated, you need to own stock in the company doing the automating. It’s the only way to hedge your personal balance sheet against your own obsolescence.

Your Window Is Closing

This sounds uncomfortably dark because it is.

The “Help Wanted” signs are disappearing. The rent prices are rising while wages stall.

The Engels’ Pause is here. The gap between the Haves (capital owners) and the Have-Nots (labor) is about to widen into a chasm.

You have a brief window of time – perhaps 12 to 24 months – before the rest of the world realizes the ship is sinking. Right now, they’re still in the ballroom, debating whether the Fed will engineer a ‘soft landing.’

They don’t see the CHAOS. But you do.

It’s time to get in the lifeboat.

You can’t stop the flood – but you can ride the current.

The single most powerful wealth strategy in a CHAOS economy is to move with the capital flows that Washington unleashes. Every modern fortune – from wartime steel to internet infrastructure – started with government contracts.

And right now, the government is quietly laying the groundwork for the biggest industrial expansion since World War II: the Genesis Mission.

I’ve spent weeks pulling executive orders, DOE memos, and company intel to identify who stands to benefit most from this modern-day Manhattan Project. And on Jan. 27, I’ll go live to reveal what my team has uncovered – the 52 companies already positioned to benefit when Phase Two is made public on Feb. 22. 

That’s the real market-mover – when Wall Street gets eyes on the contract details, connects the dots… and drives up stock prices.

This is the bridge between CHAOS and opportunity. So, keep an eye on your inbox leading up to my free broadcast on Jan. 27 – because the countdown has already begun.

The post CHAOS Economics: How to Survive and Thrive Amid the AI Job Collapse appeared first on InvestorPlace.

That’s what happened in 1953, when a now-famous X-ray photograph revealed the hidden structure of DNA – a pattern that had existed all along, but remained invisible until someone knew how to look.

In today’s Friday Digest takeover, TradeSmith CEO Keith Kaplan uses that moment as a powerful analogy for the market.

Keith explains how stocks, like nature, are full of recurring cycles and rhythms – patterns that are nearly impossible to spot with the naked eye. But with the right data and tools, they become surprisingly clear. Keith’s team at TradeSmith has spent years uncovering these seasonal “green zones” – specific windows when certain stocks have historically delivered their strongest returns, year after year.

Today, Keith walks through how this “X-ray view” of the market works, why these patterns have persisted through both bull and bear markets, and what the seasonality data is saying now.

And if you missed, at Keith’s Prediction 2026 event last week, he went into far greater detail and unveiled TradeSmith’s Seasonality tool. It shows these Green Zones for 5,000 stocks – down to the day. If you missed it, click here to catch the free replay.

Enough intro. I’ll let Keith take it from here.

Have a good evening,

Jeff Remsburg

How often do you see a photo that stops you cold – mouth open, pulse racing?

One that makes you question what you thought you knew.

That’s how Nobel Prize-winning biologist James Watson described seeing “Photograph 51” for the first time in January 1953.

It was a strange image taken by British chemist Rosalind Franklin with a technique called “X-ray crystallography.”

Her X-ray captured a crucial pattern in our DNA that no one had detected before. The DNA strands twisted and crossed into what we now know as “the double helix”:

Photo 51 showed for the first time that the DNA forms a double helix. Source: King’s College London Archives

These scientists weren’t the ones to discover DNA. That was back in 1869.

But 80 years went by before Franklin’s X-ray crystallography began to reveal a hidden structure that had been there all along.

Turns out, patterns and cycles are pretty much everywhere in nature.

That’s also true of the stock market. You’ve just got to be able to spot them.

And much like the DNA double helix – you can’t really do it with the naked eye…

You need an X-ray view.

That’s what our TradeSmith Seasonality software is designed to do. By analyzing more than 2.2 quintillion data points… across decades of market history… we have found historically reliable windows when specific stocks tend to rise and fall.

The patterns I’m talking about have even held up through bull and bear markets, manias and panics, wars, pandemics, and more.

And based on these signals, we created rapid-fire trading to pinpoint bullish seasonality windows on 5,000 stocks – to the day. In our backtests, the system’s trades have won with 83% accuracy.

The long-term returns were also more than twice that of the broad market:

I walked through how this “X-ray view” works during my Prediction 2026 event on Tuesday.

I also pointed out some fast-approaching seasonal patterns that every investor should be aware of… some that will hit as soon as Jan. 28. So if you missed it, make sure to catch the replay here.

Then read on for three opportunities TradeSmith Seasonality reveals now.

Buy the Hidden Green Zones in Stocks

When it comes to price cycles in stocks, it’s not really something you’d try to find manually. That’d be an enormous undertaking.

You’d have to pull up a one-year chart like this…

Line up one-year charts, one after the other, going back a decade or more…

And keep track of how that index behaved across thousands of trading windows.

Or – you could just type “SPX,” for the S&P 500, into the TradeSmith Seasonality tool. In a split second, it averages up as many years as you want…Then, it gives you one, simple seasonality trend line.

Best of all, it highlights “green zones,” when it’s gone up 80% of the time or more. Plus “red zones,” when it’s fallen 80%+ of the time. You can do this for pretty much any stock you want and map out great trades – in advance.

In the past 15 years, the S&P 500 has had green zones in late January, in April, and in October.

But the absolute best one starts June 29:

Between June 29 and July 21, the S&P has gone up in all 15 of the past 15 years, with an average return of 3.2%.

And we can find larger short-term returns by training this tool on individual stocks.

Some Quick, Bullish Trades for Your Radar

Tesla (TSLA), for one, has four of these “green zones” throughout the year. The next one is March 18 through April 6. And in that window, the stock has returned 7.8%, on average, over the last 15 years.

Then, TSLA has an especially strong window starting May 20. Buying that day returned an average 12.7% in just one month – through June 22:

Those are the optimal patterns to follow our seasonality strategy, trading individual stocks at their absolute best times of year. And our seasonality data on the stock market tells a dramatic story now for 2026.

It paints a compelling picture of other companies, too.

In honor of Rosalind Franklin, the pioneer who took that crucial photograph of our DNA…

Let’s look at a biotech company.

Here’s the seasonality “X-ray” of Eli Lilly (LLY).

The optimal time to own LLY is also mid-year, although it also offers a nice, quick bullish trade from Feb. 11 to March 5:

As you can see, that mid-year green zone begins on June 4 and ends on July 17. It has an 86.7% historical accuracy rate. And over that time, it returned an average gain of 5.6%.

And I’m sure you’ll also notice all the other times of year that don’t get these green or red windows.

That’s because we aren’t willing to dive in at any random season.

We only want to trade the deepest, most predictable cycles. So reliable, they’re like the eternal rhythms of nature and biology.

Using TradeSmith’s Seasonality tool, we’ve put this approach to the test across thousands of stocks, major indexes, and even commodities and currencies.

Over an 18-year backtest, following seasonal patterns delivered 857% in total returns — more than twice what the S&P 500 returned over the same stretch.

The very worst year in our test was 2007 – and even then, our strategy still turned a profit. And it beat the S&P 500 by over 2-to-1 that year.

Mark Your Calendar for These Key Dates

That’s why, if you missed it, I hope you’ll check out the replay of our Prediction 2026 event.

I’ll walk you through the seasonal patterns coming up that you need to watch for…why they keep working even when markets get chaotic…and how to put them to work in your own portfolio.

As you’ll see, getting your timing right could matter more to your wealth than any stock pick you make this year.

And the first date to watch is Jan. 28. If this seasonal pattern plays out as expected, it could unlock one of the best trading setups we’ve seen in decades.

So, check out the replay while there’s still time.

All the best,

Keith Kaplan
CEO, TradeSmith

The post This “X-Ray View” Shows When Stocks Tend to Rise and Fall appeared first on InvestorPlace.

Gold bugs are usually the kind of folks who seem to enjoy being in a bad mood.

Many of them are permanently bearish on the market. They like to point to things like government deficits, make philosophical arguments about fiat currency – and there’s always a crash that’s just around the corner.

That’s just not my style.

But you may have noticed that gold prices have continued to meander higher since the start of the year, setting new record high after new record high.

In fact, if you’ve been paying attention to the market at all, you know this isn’t anything new.

Gold has been on a historic rally for quite some time now.

As you can see in the chart, this move didn’t happen overnight. Gold prices broke above $2,400 per ounce around August 2024 and have been trending higher steadily, building momentum over months.

Now that prices have roughly doubled since then, a lot of investors are wondering whether this rally can continue.

In today’s ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ 360, I’m going to explain why I believe it can. The reality is that several powerful forces have driven gold’s historic move, and importantly, every one of those forces remains in place today.

Now, my followers and I have been positioned for this rally for a while. I wish I could say we caught the very first dollar of the move. But what matters more is this: my system helped us recognize a shift in the market early and adjust our positioning accordingly.

And that’s the real lesson here.

So, if you’ve missed some of the action so far, don’t worry. I’ll also show you the best way to profit from this trend going forward.

Finally, I’m going to walk you through an even more important market shift that’s beginning to take shape right now, one that could catch most investors flat-footed. I’ll explain what’s changing, why it matters, and how you can prepare before the crowd finally realizes what’s happened.

Gold’s Rally Didn’t Happen by Accident

One of the main reasons gold prices have soared over the past year is that global central banks have been buying gold hand over fist. Gold is a legitimate reserve currency for central banks, and they have been steadily increasing their exposure.

At the same time, a lot of investors around the world are not particularly happy with central banks or their policies. Years of aggressive intervention, ballooning deficits, and constant policy reversals have eroded confidence that monetary authorities are fully in control.

There’s also a bigger global backdrop here that helps explain why gold buying has been so persistent. Outside the U.S. and India, population growth is slowing or outright shrinking across much of the world. Europe is shrinking. Most of Asia is shrinking. When countries lose households, it becomes very difficult to grow their economies, and that creates powerful deflationary pressure globally.

Central banks cannot fix that problem with policy alone. We’re seeing it most clearly in places like China, which has been battling deflation for years now, and in parts of Europe and Japan, where growth remains elusive and deficits are becoming harder to finance. Large institutional investors understand this, which is why bond markets are increasingly policing fiscal behavior in countries like Britain, France, and Japan.

Against that backdrop, it’s not hard to understand why so many investors are frustrated with central banks around the world. Gold buying has been relentless because it represents an asset that exists outside a system facing long-term structural challenges.

There’s also a fair bit of geopolitical uncertainty driving demand for safe havens like gold, from tensions in the Middle East to the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. I also suspect many crypto investors will continue shifting toward gold this year, simply because gold has outperformed crypto by a wide margin over the past year.

What’s more, if global central banks continue cutting key interest rates in 2026, gold prices should continue to benefit. Gold remains an alternative to cash, and as interest rates decline, the opportunity cost of holding gold declines as well.

In short, gold is a viable alternative to your bank account. It cannot be created by governments. It is not someone else’s liability. When confidence in fiat currencies declines, even gradually, gold tends to attract capital.

And since it tends to “zig” when the rest of the market “zags,” it’s worth a look for any investor, whether you’re a gold bug or not.

The fact is that the demand for gold has been broad, persistent and driven by long-term forces, not short-term speculation.

But there’s an important distinction investors need to understand.

Owning gold is one way to play this, but it’s not the only way. And historically, it hasn’t been the most profitable way either.

During sustained gold bull markets, the biggest gains often do not come from the metal itself.

They come from the businesses that benefit most when gold prices rise.

I’m talking about gold mining stocks.

The Case for Gold Mining Stocks

The simple fact of the matter is that if you’re only investing in gold by buying physical bullion (or coins) – or even an exchange-traded fund that aims to track the price of gold, you may be leaving serious money on the table.

Here’s why.

During gold bull markets, the real profit potential often lies not in the metal itself, but in the companies that mine it.

The reason is leverage.

Gold miners operate with largely fixed production costs. Their labor, equipment, energy and infrastructure expenses do not change much just because gold prices move higher. But when gold prices rise, their revenues increase immediately.

That causes margins to expand. Cash flow improves. Earnings power rises faster than the price of gold itself.

In other words, a modest move in the metal can translate into a much larger move in the stock.

That’s why, historically, well-positioned gold miners have often outperformed gold by a wide margin during sustained bull markets. It happened during the 2000 to 2011 gold bull market. We saw it again from 2015 through 2020.

And we’re seeing it again today.

That’s great news for the 16 gold stocks that we currently own in Accelerated Profits.

We’ve gradually added these mining stocks to our Buy List throughout 2024 and 2025. And in nearly every single instance, they’ve outperformed the price of gold.

In fact, we added our biggest winner in September 2024. And while gold is up a little more than 90%, this mining stock is up more than 240%.

Given these factors, it’s not too surprising that our gold stocks have had an excellent start to 2026. The gold stocks we own are up strongly on average so far this year, with broad participation across the group.

The point is that this isn’t about one lucky pick or a single headline-driven spike. It’s exactly how leadership tends to look when a shift is underway but not yet obvious to the broader market.

Just as important, just because it’s obvious now does not mean the opportunity is over.

We aim to hold on to many of our gold stocks – while selectively pocketing some gains along the way.

But the bigger takeaway here is not simply that gold stocks are working. It’s that this is how market leadership changes before most investors realize what’s happening.

Gold has been a clear case study in that process.

Another Leadership Change

This brings me to the more important shift I mentioned earlier.

Gold did not surge all at once. It moved gradually, then all at once. Most investors did not notice the shift until it was obvious.

ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ leadership changes the same way.

It rarely collapses overnight. Instead, familiar winners stop making progress. Prices go sideways. Relative performance deteriorates. Meanwhile, a new group of stocks begins to quietly take the baton.

At first, most investors dismiss it. Then they rationalize it. And eventually, they wake up and realize the market they thought they were in no longer exists.

That’s exactly the risk I see building now, particularly in many of the AI stocks investors know and love.

These stocks do not need to crash to cause damage. They can go flat. They can drift lower. They can underperform quietly while capital rotates elsewhere. For investors who remain heavily exposed, the result is the same. Lost time. Lost opportunity. And growing frustration.

This is what I’ve been calling a Hidden Crash.

It’s not a dramatic market meltdown. It’s a leadership breakdown that happens quietly, while the major indexes still look fine.

According to my research, many of the well-known AI stocks that have carried the market for years are showing signs of fatigue. That’s dangerous, because when market leadership fades, it usually does not happen with a single headline or a sudden collapse. It happens through underperformance and opportunity cost.

At the same time, a new group of AI leaders is already beginning to emerge.

That’s why I recently delivered a special presentation explaining exactly how these leadership transitions unfold, what signs I’m watching beneath the surface of the market, and how investors can reposition before the shift becomes obvious.

If you wait until everyone agrees that the leadership has changed, it will already be too late.

To see what I believe is coming next, which AI stocks I think are at risk, and where I see the next leaders forming, click here to learn more about the Hidden Crash and how to position for it now.

Sincerely,

Louis Navellier

Editor, ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ 360

The post Why Gold’s Rally Can Continue in 2026 and What It Tells Us About the Next ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ Shift appeared first on InvestorPlace.

And in the early 1960s, few investors understood why the government was pouring billions into rockets, computing machines, and aerospace firms most people had never heard of.

But those who recognized what was really happening (that the United States had mobilized private industry to win an existential race), were able to position themselves early and change their financial futures forever.

Stop trying to make sense of 2026 using the rulebook from 2019. That book is burned. Today, we are living through the most profound economic reorganization in American history since the signing of the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago. 

We have left the era of “free market globalism” – a fifty-year fever dream where we pretended geography didn’t matter and that selling cheap consumer apps was the pinnacle of human achievement.

That party is over.

We’ve entered a new era where the U.S. government is no longer just regulating markets … it’s actively partnering with private companies to win an existential race.

You can call it state-sponsored capitalism. You can call it mercantilism 2.0. Alex Karp, one of the primary architects of this new reality, calls it the Technological Republic.

The label doesn’t really matter.

What matters is when the government decides it can’t afford to lose, it stops debating and starts building.

That’s what we’re watching right now.

The United States is doing what it has always done at pivotal moments in history: mobilizing private industry, clearing regulatory roadblocks, funding winners, and setting hard deadlines to achieve a strategic goal.

That’s how we won the race to the atomic bomb.

That’s how we beat the Soviets to the Moon.

And that’s how we’re now responding to China’s push for AI dominance.

By naming its partners and moving money, the government has made its priorities clear. At moments like this, the market rewards understanding how the system works, and positioning yourself before the execution phase begins.

The only real question for your financial future is whether you’re positioned while the window is still open…

The End of the “Free ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½” Fantasy

For decades, the prevailing wisdom in Washington was that the government should set fair rules and then get out of the way. The “invisible hand” would guide capital to its most efficient use.

Well, it turns out the invisible hand loves cheap labor in China and doesn’t care about national security. When you let the market decide, you end up with a hollowed-out industrial base and an adversary that controls 90% of the critical minerals needed to build the future.

The new administration, backed by the “Hard Power” axis of Peter Thiel, JD Vance, and Alex Karp, has looked at that reality and said: “To hell with the invisible hand. We’re using the iron fist.”

We are no longer in a free market, but a “Command Economy for National Survival.”

In this new system, the government doesn’t seize the means of production like some Soviet cosplayer. Instead, the government directs the means of production. It picks the winners based on one simple criterion: Does this company help America achieve undeniable, durable dominance in AI?

If the answer is “yes,” that company gets deregulation, subsidized capital, and the full diplomatic and military weight of the U.S. government clearing its path.

If the answer is “no,” enjoy your antitrust lawsuit.

You saw the tech CEOs trooping to Washington last year to “bend the knee.” More than just a photo op, that was the signing of a new social contract….

Silicon Valley agreed to stop building useless consumer hedonism and start building the Arsenal of Democracy 2.0.

In exchange, Washington agreed to stop pretending it cares about environmental reviews that take five years to approve a power line.

The result is a merger of State and Tech that would make a 19th-century railroad baron blush.

Geopolitics as Supply Chain Management

If you want to understand why the world looks so crazy right now, stop looking at it through the lens of foreign policy and start looking at it through the lens of supply chain management.

The Technological Republic has an insatiable hunger. It needs three things to build the AI godhead: Infinite Energy, Infinite Raw Materials, and Infinite Compute. It is currently starving for all three.

Exhibit A: Venezuela. Do you think the operation on Jan. 3 was because America’s heart suddenly bled for the plight of Caracas? Please.

The math is simple. We are trying to build AI clusters that require 5 Gigawatts of power – the equivalent of five nuclear reactors – per campus. We need that power tomorrow. We cannot build nuclear plants fast enough. Solar panels are a joke at that scale.

We needed the world’s largest proven oil and gas reserves brought back online, under American management (hello, Chevron), to crash the price of energy and provide the bridge fuel for the AI buildout.

Exhibit B: Greenland. Why is the administration suddenly threatening to buy (or “liberate”) Greenland? Because China choked off the supply of Dysprosium and Terbium last October. You cannot build high-performance electric motors for humanoid robots or advanced wind turbines without them. Guess who has them? Greenland. And if the “Technological Republic” needs them? Well, that’s the end of the discussion.

This is the new reality.

The U.S. military and diplomatic corps are now effectively the procurement department for “Project Stargate”: the $500 billion government-backed AI initiative.

Adapt to the New Investment Paradigm… or Die

So, what does this mean for your money?

It means that if your portfolio is still optimized for the 2010s (full of ESG-friendly consumer brands, ad-tech companies, and decentralized crypto-fluff), you are going to get slaughtered.

We’re moving into a new investment environment – one defined by massive, government-backed industrial buildouts. Not slogans or studies but actual construction: data centers, advanced chips, power infrastructure, manufacturing capacity.

And this time, the government isn’t standing on the sidelines. In plain English, the message to industry is simple: Build the most powerful computing infrastructure in history … and do it fast.

The government has essentially told Big Tech: “You have an unlimited budget and a mandate to build the most powerful computing infrastructure in human history. Don’t let anything stop you.”

When unlimited capital chases scarce physical resources, what happens? The prices of those resources go parabolic.

The only way to invest in this environment is to own the choke points. You must own the things that the Technological Republic cannot build its AI without, and which it currently doesn’t have enough of.

We have identified the 6-Layer AI Bottleneck Stack. This is the playbook for the next decade.

1. The Raw Materials Layer (The Dirt)

You can print money, but you cannot print copper. You cannot code lithium. The physical inputs required for this buildout are in terrifyingly short supply. We are facing a 10-million-ton copper deficit over the next decade. The administration knows this. That’s why they are laser-focused on domestic mining and “friend-shoring” resources.

• The Play: Own the western copper, lithium, and uranium narrative. The ground itself is now a strategic asset.

2. The Power Layer (The Electrons)

This is the biggest crisis of them all. AI is an energy vampire. The grid is full. The new paradigm is “pay to play”—Big Tech is being forced to build its own power generation “behind the meter,” bypassing the public grid entirely. The only solution for 24/7, carbon-free, massive-scale power is nuclear.

• The Play: Own the existing nuclear fleet and the fuel cycle. They hold the keys to the only energy source that fits the mission profile.

3. The Infrastructure Layer (The Shell)

We aren’t just plugging new computers into old buildings. A rack of Nvidia Blackwell chips runs so hot it would melt a standard server room. We have to retrofit the entire internet with liquid cooling plumbing. We need new switchgear, new transformers, and massive new physical shells.

• The Play: Own the companies that manage heat and physical power distribution. The “plumbers” of the AI age are about to become kings.

4. The Compute Layer (The Brains)

The bottleneck here has shifted. It’s no longer just about getting a raw GPU. It’s about “packaging”—the incredibly complex process of stitching the GPU and memory together on silicon. Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) is practically the sole provider of this magic. Furthermore, the US government is actively pushing American-designed custom silicon to reduce reliance on generic chips.

• The Play: Own the packaging monopoly and the leaders in US-designed custom silicon.

5. The Memory Layer (The Context)

An AI chip without memory is useless. The new HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) chips are stacked vertically like skyscrapers on a microscopic scale. The manufacturing yield is terrible, and the entire global supply is sold out until 2027.

• The Play: Own the domestic memory producers who have cornered the market on the high-end supply.

6. The Networking Layer (The Nervous System)

When you connect 100,000 GPUs together, copper wires are too slow. You need light. The entire inside of the datacenter is switching from electrical cables to fiber optics and lasers. We are short on the lasers.

• The Play: Own the masters of optical interconnects and low-latency switching.

The Train Is Leaving

Look, I understand why this feels unsettling.

For decades, we were taught that markets move on innovation, consumer demand, and free-market competition alone. That governments regulate… and companies create. That line is blurring fast.

The Technological Republic is here, and it was born out of necessity. If we lose the AI race to China, nothing else matters. So the entire apparatus of the United States is now geared toward one singular goal.

And history is clear on one thing: when the United States decides it cannot afford to lose, ideology takes a back seat to execution.

That’s why the response has been decisive…

The government has named its partners.

It has cleared regulatory obstacles.

It has set hard deadlines.

And it has begun directing a flood of money – trillions of dollars from both private coffers and the public purse – to the six bottlenecks listed above. The government is using a firehose to blast away regulatory hurdles and using its military to secure the supply lines.

In moments like this, the market rewards those who understand what’s happening and position themselves before execution begins.

Which is why, on Jan. 27, I will broadcast a special event to help you get positioned early.

You always have a choice.

You can wait for the headlines, the confirmations, the CNBC segments, and buy after the easy gains are gone.

Or you can recognize this for what it is: a government-led mobilization with a clear timeline, a defined set of partners, and enormous financial consequences for the companies at the center of it.

History shows where the real wealth is created.

So, keep an eye on your inbox leading up to my free broadcast on Jan. 27 – because the countdown has already begun.

It’s time to adapt or die.

The post Welcome to the End of the Free-ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ Era (and the Birth of the Technological Republic) appeared first on InvestorPlace.

Heavy lies the crown…especially in the stock market.

For investors, “Top Dog” status – the #1 company by market capitalization – is often “dismayingly unattractive.”

That conclusion comes from billionaire investor Rob Arnott, founder of Research Affiliates, whose research shows that market dominance is frequently the start of underperformance, not the reward for past success.

In 2012, Arnott and Lillian Wu published “The Winners Curse: Too Big to Succeed?”

The takeaway was simple: once a company reaches the summit of market cap dominance, the forces acting against it begin to multiply.

Expectations soar. Scrutiny intensifies. Competitors sharpen their knives.

And what once looked like unstoppable momentum turns into a battle just to justify today’s valuation.

That’s not a hot take – it’s a data-grounded recurring pattern. And for today’s Magnificent Seven (Mag 7) investors, it’s a warning worth heeding.

What history shows about being on top

Arnott and his team studied what happens after a company becomes the largest player in its sector or country – what they call a “Top Dog.”

The results weren’t encouraging for those chasing the biggest names.

Here’s Arnott:

We find a statistically significant tendency for top companies in each sector to underperform both the overall sector and the stock market as a whole.

Across U.S. markets, Arnott found that sector leaders underperformed their peers by roughly 300 – 400 basis points per year over the following decade.

The reasons aren’t mysterious: diseconomies of scale, regulatory pressure, relentless competition, and – most importantly for investors today – valuations that assume past dominance can be endlessly extended.

Back to Arnott:

The organization with the #1 rank in market cap will often be a truly great company, but empirically is not necessarily a good investment.

Therefore, investors should anticipate the underperformance of large companies relative to the overall market.

And that brings us to today – and to the Mag 7 stocks.

To be clear, the entire group of Mag 7 stocks aren’t literal “Top Dogs”

Definitionally, only one company can hold that title.

However, functionally, with all of them in the top 10 of largest companies in the world, they fit Arnott’s framework: enormous scale, dominant narratives, heavy index concentration, and valuations that reflect an assumption of continued supremacy.

For years, that assumption was justified with the Mag 7s. Expanding margins, massive free cash flow, and healthy capital returns supported premium multiples.

But that support is starting to erode, and their prices reflect it.

Here’s Bloomberg from last week:

[Last year], For the first time since 2022, the majority of the Magnificent 7 tech giants performed worse than the S&P 500 Index.

And this shift has led to a 2026 forecast from our macro investing expert Eric Fry that deserves serious attention…

Get ready for a lot more Mag 7 underperformance.

Are we in for a new era of underperformance from yesterday’s market darlings?

If you’re new to the Digest, Eric is probably the best investor you’ve never heard of.

He’s highlighted more investments that have gone on to return 1,000%+ than anyone else we know of in our industry – 41 in total, whereas most investors are lucky to get one. So, when Eric issues a warning, we listen.

Today, he isn’t arguing that the Mag 7 are weak businesses. In fact, they remain enormously profitable and operationally dominant.

The problem, he says, is the cost to maintain that dominance – and whether investors are accounting for this new reality.

Here’s Eric from his latest issue of Fry’s Investment Report:

The combined net cash position of Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Meta, and Alphabet has collapsed from roughly $300 billion in 2017 to less than zero today.

That single data point reframes the entire story.

Cash that once flowed freely into share buybacks, dividends, and opportunistic acquisitions is now being absorbed by data centers, power infrastructure, networking equipment, and ever-larger AI training runs.

And Eric notes that this isn’t a temporary surge – the spending is accelerating:

The five leading ‘hyper-scaler’ data center operators… have invested an astounding $1.5 trillion during the last five years… And the pace of spending is increasing.

In other words, AI leadership is no longer a high-margin bonus layered on top of already-dominant platforms. It has become a capital-intensive requirement – one with an uncertain and increasingly delayed payoff.

This is where Arnott’s historical research and Eric’s analysis converge

ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½s don’t punish companies for being large.

They lose patience when each new dollar invested produces less payoff than before – especially when valuations still reflect an earlier, more profitable era.

As Eric puts it, the real risk for the Mag 7 isn’t that revenues suddenly stall. It’s that investors begin demanding a clearer timetable:

I expect investors to start asking harder questions like, ‘Where does incremental free cash flow come from and when will it arrive?’…

In that world, AI becomes a ‘cost center,’ rather than a powerful growth driver.

Now here’s what Mag 7 owners need to understand most…

Eric doesn’t believe a recession or market shock is required for this shift to matter. The Mag 7s can begin to disappoint simply by adjusting to more realistic expectations.

And according to Eric, “That world has arrived.”

Where to find outsize returns today

If you’re convinced that your Mag 7 exposure deserves trimming, the next question becomes: where do you redeploy those freed-up dollars?

Eric offers two answers in his 2026 forecasts – both of which benefit from the opposite dynamic facing the Mag 7: lower expectations, saner valuations, and improving structural fundamentals.

Let’s start with copper.

Regular Digest readers know that I’m very bullish on copper (last Monday’s Digest presented my latest case).

But it’s Eric’s research that turned me onto this idea years ago. And his conviction has only strengthened. In fact, if you think the last leg of the copper rally was impressive, Eric believes it may ultimately look like the warm-up act.

Here’s his 2026 copper prediction:

Copper prices will reach at least $8.00 per pound sometime in 2026 – driven by structural supply constraints and accelerating demand for electrification, AI infrastructure, renewables, grid expansion, and industrial modernization.

Independent research backs up Eric’s claims.

S&P Global projects copper demand could surge roughly 50% by 2040. But the supply to meet this demand simply isn’t there.

Back to Eric:

The copper market is tilting toward long-term deficits.

The International Copper Study Group (ICSG) expects today’s refined-copper balance to flip into a deficit of roughly 150,000 tonnes next year, as mine production growth slows and concentrate availability tightens. UBS anticipates an even larger deficit of 400,000 tonnes.

Even if every currently announced copper project advances into production, the IEA still sees a 30% supply gap by 2035.

And that scarcity – combined with relentless demand growth – creates the kind of structural tailwind that the Mag 7 once enjoyed but can no longer take for granted.

For a simple, one-click way to play copper, check out Sprott’s Copper Miners ETF (COPP).

And to learn Eric’s preferred way to invest as an Investment Report subscriber, click here to learn about joining him.

A second, contrarian idea from Eric…

Buy Europe.

I don’t want to run too long today, so instead of unpacking this in full, I’ll give you Eric’s annotated investment thesis.

At first glance, “Buy Europe” sounds counterintuitive – especially after a decade in which “Buy America” became investing gospel.

But Eric’s forecast doesn’t hinge on Europe growing faster or innovating more than the U.S. It hinges on something markets may soon value more highly…

Reliability.

Here’s Eric:

Energy shocks, supply-chain disruptions, war on its eastern flank, and now growing policy unpredictability from the United States have all delivered the same message…

Europe can no longer assume that external commerce will always be reliable.

So, Europe has begun doing something subtle, but powerful: prioritizing intra-European trade and supply chains. This is not protectionism in the old sense; it is selective self-reliance.

Eric’s argument is that this inward focus gives European stocks something investors traditionally pay a premium for – dependability and predictability in an age of mounting geopolitical noise.

But today, European equities don’t carry any premium whatsoever. In fact, they trade at a substantial discount to U.S. stocks.

Back to Eric:

Not because European stocks are demonstrably inferior, but because of a collective “muscle memory.”

Investors remain anchored to lingering narratives about both the U.S. and Europe.

Eric goes much deeper in his full analysis, building a compelling valuation and fundamental case. If you’re an Investment Report subscriber, click here to log in and read the entire case in your January issue.

But for now, here’s Eric’s bottom line:

The forecast is straightforward: European stocks are likely to outperform U.S. stocks in 2026 – not because Europe suddenly became exciting, but because it became dependable at precisely the moment dependability grew scarce.

For broad exposure to Europe, check out VGK, the Vanguard FTSE Europe ETF.

It holds heavyweights including AstraZeneca (AZN), Novartis (NOVN), and Shell (SHEL).

Before we wrap up, Luke Lango has a different take on the best way to redeploy your Mag 7 profits today

While the Mag 7 stumbles, and Eric points us toward copper and Europe, Luke’s watching something most investors have completely missed…

A $500 billion government mobilization that officially launched on November 24th.

I’m referencing President Trump’s Genesis Mission executive order.

Its goals are to:

• Use AI to accelerate energy advancements
• Invest in a quantum ecosystem for scientific breakthroughs, and
• Develop AI for national security

It explicitly compares itself to the Manhattan Project and the Apollo Program.

When the government threw its financial weight around like this before, companies like DuPont and Boeing delivered gains of 1,844% and 24,400% respectively. This time, 52 companies have been named to win the AI race against China, with hard deadlines starting February 22nd.

These aren’t trillion-dollar mega-caps. They’re small, obscure names in quantum computing, nuclear energy, and advanced semiconductors.

Our technology expert Luke Lango has spent two months analyzing this opportunity, and he has the names for your portfolio.

We’ll bring you his complete research next week when his Genesis Mission briefing goes live. But given how big this opportunity appears to be, I’d recommend holding some dry powder ready.

Coming full circle…

As we wrap up today, it’s a good time to remember what history says about returns after reaching “Top Dog” levels.

In short, heavy lies the crown.

Investing accordingly.

Have a good evening,

Jeff Remsburg

The post Beware These Beloved Stocks appeared first on InvestorPlace.

It’s a topic that’s getting more attention for good reason. If you can spot when a stock is likely to move – based on what it’s done in the past – it can give you a real edge. But the key is consistency and filtering out the noise.

In today’s ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ 360, Keith Kaplan explains how his team uncovered historical patterns in stock price behavior – including some that have repeated year after year with surprising accuracy.

He calls it a kind of “X-ray view” – and what stands out is how often these patterns show up across different stocks, sectors and even in volatile years.

Keith revealed how it all works during his Prediction 2026 event, explaining how these repeatable patterns could give investors a clearer roadmap for the months ahead.

Click here to watch the full replay before the next major window opens on January 28.

Now, here’s Keith with more…

****

How often do you see a photo that stops you cold – mouth open, pulse racing?

One that makes you question what you thought you knew.

That’s how Nobel Prize-winning biologist James Watson described seeing “Photograph 51” for the first time in January 1953.

It was a strange image taken by British chemist Rosalind Franklin with a technique called “X-ray crystallography.”

Her X-ray captured a crucial pattern in our DNA that no one had detected before. The DNA strands twisted and crossed into what we now know as “the double helix”:

Photo 51 showed for the first time that the DNA forms a double helix. Source: King’s College London Archives

These scientists weren’t the ones to discover DNA. That was back in 1869.

But 80 years went by before Franklin’s X-ray crystallography began to reveal a hidden structure that had been there all along.

Turns out, patterns and cycles are pretty much everywhere in nature.

That’s also true of the stock market. You’ve just got to be able to spot them.

And much like the DNA double helix – you can’t really do it with the naked eye…

You need an X-ray view.

That’s what our TradeSmith Seasonality software is designed to do. By analyzing more than 2.2 quintillion data points… across decades of market history… we have found historically reliable windows when specific stocks tend to rise and fall.

The patterns I’m talking about have even held up through bull and bear markets, manias and panics, wars, pandemics, and more.

And based on these signals, we created rapid-fire trading to pinpoint bullish seasonality windows on 5,000 stocks – to the day. In our backtests, the system’s trades have won with 83% accuracy.

The long-term returns were also more than twice that of the broad market:

I walked through how this “X-ray view” works during my Prediction 2026 event on Tuesday.

I also pointed out some fast-approaching seasonal patterns that every investor should be aware of… some that will hit as soon as Jan. 28. So if you missed it, make sure to catch the replay here.

Then read on for three opportunities TradeSmith Seasonality reveals now.

Buy the Hidden Green Zones in Stocks

When it comes to price cycles in stocks, it’s not really something you’d try to find manually. That’d be an enormous undertaking.

You’d have to pull up a one-year chart like this…

Line up one-year charts, one after the other, going back a decade or more…

And keep track of how that index behaved across thousands of trading windows.

Or – you could just type “SPX,” for the S&P 500, into the TradeSmith Seasonality tool. In a split second, it averages up as many years as you want…Then, it gives you one, simple seasonality trend line.

Best of all, it highlights “green zones,” when it’s gone up 80% of the time or more. Plus “red zones,” when it’s fallen 80%+ of the time. You can do this for pretty much any stock you want and map out great trades – in advance.

In the past 15 years, the S&P 500 has had green zones in late January, in April, and in October.

But the absolute best one starts June 29:

Between June 29 and July 21, the S&P has gone up in all 15 of the past 15 years, with an average return of 3.2%.

And we can find larger short-term returns by training this tool on individual stocks.

Some Quick, Bullish Trades for Your Radar

Tesla (TSLA), for one, has four of these “green zones” throughout the year. The next one is March 18 through April 6. And in that window, the stock has returned 7.8%, on average, over the last 15 years.

Then, TSLA has an especially strong window starting May 20. Buying that day returned an average12.7% in just one month – through June 22:

Those are the optimal patterns to follow our seasonality strategy, trading individual stocks at their absolute best times of year. And our seasonality data on the stock market tells a dramatic story now for 2026. 

It paints a compelling picture of other companies, too.

In honor of Rosalind Franklin, the pioneer who took that crucial photograph of our DNA…

Let’s look at a biotech company.

Here’s the seasonality “X-ray” of Eli Lilly (LLY).

The optimal time to own LLY is also mid-year, although it also offers a nice, quick bullish trade from Feb. 11 to March 5:

As you can see, that mid-year green zone begins on June 4 and ends on July 17. It has an 86.7% historical accuracy rate. And over that time, it returned an average gain of 5.6%.

And I’m sure you’ll also notice all the other times of year that don’t get these green or red windows.

That’s because we aren’t willing to dive in at any random season.

We only want to trade the deepest, most predictable cycles. So reliable, they’re like the eternal rhythms of nature and biology.

Using TradeSmith’s Seasonality tool, we’ve put this approach to the test across thousands of stocks, major indexes, and even commodities and currencies.

Over an 18-year backtest, following seasonal patterns delivered 857% in total returns — more than twice what the S&P 500 returned over the same stretch.

The very worst year in our test was 2007 – and even then, our strategy still turned a profit. And it beat the S&P 500 by over 2-to-1 that year.

Mark Your Calendar for These Key Dates

That’s why, if you missed it, I hope you’ll check out the replay of our Prediction 2026 event.

I’ll walk you through the seasonal patterns coming up that you need to watch for…why they keep working even when markets get chaotic…and how to put them to work in your own portfolio.

As you’ll see, getting your timing right could matter more to your wealth than any stock pick you make this year.

And the first date to watch is Jan. 28. If this seasonal pattern plays out as expected, it could unlock one of the best trading setups we’ve seen in decades.

So, check out the replay while there’s still time.

All the best,

Keith Kaplan
CEO, TradeSmith

The post The Stock ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½â€™s DNA Has Been Cracked appeared first on InvestorPlace.

When those moments arrive, millions of small choices stack up into powerful market forces.

So, what happens when you stop asking what to invest in and start asking when?

ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ moves are not purely random or headline-driven. Instead, there are recurring windows – measurable, testable, and historically reliable – that quietly shape returns year after year.

As we head deeper into 2026, understanding those windows may matter far more than any resolution you made a few weeks ago.

That is why our partners at TradeSmith just debuted their new Seasonality tool. They’ve created a system that spots specific market patterns and foresees the biggest jumps on 5,000 stocks, signaling investors the most profitable times to enter or exit a trade – and potentially double your money.

You can learn more here.

Today, TradeSmith CEO Keith Kaplan will share more details about the power of understanding market patterns…

If you’re like millions of other Americans, you probably made a New Year’s resolution this month.

Maybe to save more, cut down on calories, or spend more time in the gym.

If so, here’s an uncomfortable truth…

How long you stick to that resolution has less to do with discipline than timing.

You see, most people don’t abandon good intentions at random. They do it on a schedule.

That idea first caught the attention of a Wharton professor named Katy

Milkman in the early 2010s. She wasn’t interested in motivational speeches or willpower. She focused on something narrower – and stranger. Not why people decide to change, but when.

What she found was remarkably consistent. Decisions to diet, exercise, save, or invest didn’t spread evenly across the year. They clustered tightly around a handful of dates: Mondays, the first day of the month, birthdays, and – above all – January 1.

To test the pattern, Milkman and her colleagues looked at gym check-ins, Google searches, and enrollment records for self-improvement courses.

Right after these so-called “fresh start” dates, effort surged. Diets began. Savings plans were opened. Gym attendance spiked.

Then, just as reliably, it faded.

The insight wasn’t that people lack willpower. It was that human behavior runs on a calendar. Motivation rises and falls on a schedule, whether we notice it or not.

Once you see that, an even more interesting question follows: If individual decisions surge and retreat at predictable moments, what happens when millions of people make those shifts at once?

ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½s, after all, are nothing more than the sum of those decisions.

It’s a question my team and I at TradeSmith set out to answer in 2024 with the help of thousands of lines of computer code and quintillions (billions of billions!) of market data points.

Closing the Gap With Wall Street Elites

If you don’t know us already, TradeSmith is the creator of a leading financial technology platform, based in Baltimore, Maryland.

Today, we help more than 134,000 people around the world monitor more than $29 billion in assets. And Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist have profiled our breakthroughs.

We’ve built tools to help everyday investors track portfolios, manage risk, and spot opportunities. We’ve even created, tested, and released a popular AI-trading model.

We were confident we’d find some seasonality patterns in how stocks trade. But what we discovered surprised even us.

It turns out that thousands of stocks showed historically reliable windows – specific times of the year when they tended to rise, and others when they tended to stall or fall.

We call them “green days.”

And based on these green days, we built a trading system designed to act on them – pinpointing bullish seasonal windows on roughly 5,000 stocks, down to the day. In backtests, those trades succeeded with an 83% historical accuracy rate.

You can see this tool in action by watching a replay of our Prediction 2026 event, where we discuss the seasonal patterns you need to be aware of as we kick off the year.

First, it helps to understand that seasonality isn’t some new invention. It’s shaped markets for a long time.

Traders Have Always Tracked Cycles

Commodity traders have always tracked planting and harvest cycles. Energy markets move with heating and cooling demand. Gold has long shown seasonal strength tied to jewelry demand and annual buying patterns in India and China.

Stock investors, too, have noticed calendar effects.

The January Effect. Quarter-end rebalancing. Even the old saying “Sell in May and go away.”

What’s changed isn’t that seasonality suddenly appeared. It’s that we can now measure it precisely – across individual stocks, over decades of data, and down to specific days.

Take Target (TGT).

For all the volatility surrounding the retailer in recent years, one pattern has held with striking consistency. Between June 22 and July 21, Target stock has risen an average of 5.2%, climbing 100% of the time over the past 15 years.

That pattern held again in 2025, when the stock gained 10.3% during its seasonal window – long after pandemic-era distortions faded.

Home Depot (HD) shows a similar rhythm.

Between June 15 and July 27, the stock has risen 93% of the time over the past 15 years, with an average gain of 4.7%. In 2025, it followed the same script, rising 6.7% in just over a month.

These aren’t one-off coincidences. They’re examples of a broader phenomenon that only becomes visible when you analyze markets through the lens of timing rather than narrative.

Using our Seasonality tool, we’ve tested this approach across thousands of stocks, indexes like the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, and even currencies and commodities.

Over an 18-year backtest, seasonal trades generated 857% total growth – more than double the S&P 500’s return over the same period.

Even in 2007, the weakest year in the test, the strategy produced a positive return, with gains of more than double the S&P 500 over the same time.

Circle These Dates on Your Calendar

That’s why I urge you to explore how our Seasonality software works and watch the Prediction 2026 event now.

I’ll be getting into more detail about the fast-approaching seasonality patterns you need to be aware of, walking you through how we uncovered them, why they persist even in chaotic markets, and how you can use them to guide real-world trading decisions.

Knowing when the windows are opening and closing likely matters more to your wealth than any single resolution you’ve made.

The first date you’ll want to circle on your calendar is January 28. If seasonality patterns hold this year, it could open up the most lucrative trading opportunity in decades.

Click here for all the details.

Keith Kaplan
CEO, TradeSmith

The post Circle These Dates: The ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½â€™s Next Big Windows appeared first on InvestorPlace.

Right now, 22,000 miles above our heads, autonomous robots are docking with decades-old satellites, extending their lives and keeping billions of dollars worth of infrastructure operational. No astronauts or mission control; just AI-powered systems rewriting the economics of space.

My colleague Keith Kaplan from TradeSmith has been tracking this transformation closely, and today he’s sharing some compelling opportunities in the space economy. But what makes this particularly timely is that Keith’s team has just uncovered what they’re calling their biggest financial breakthrough in 21 years – a new approach to timing the market’s largest moves with remarkable precision.

They call it “green day” investing. Since going live in 2025, this strategy has helped investors double their money 13 different times. And the space stocks Keith discusses below are exactly the kind of opportunities this system is designed to capitalize on – high-conviction plays with identifiable timing windows that can amplify your returns.

Read on for Keith’s full analysis, then watch TradeSmith’s Prediction 2026 event to see how this new timing approach could help you navigate what’s shaping up to be one of the most unusual – and potentially profitable – market environments in modern history.

On Feb. 25, 2020, more than 22,000 miles above Earth, a refrigerator-sized spacecraft eased toward a satellite that had been in service since the Clinton administration. 

Intelsat-901 sat in geostationary orbit, circling the planet once every 24 hours at the same speed as Earth’s rotation. 

From its fixed position over the planet, it relayed TV broadcasts, data, and communications across several continents. But time was catching up with it. 

Its computers and antennas still worked. Its solar panels still generated power. But it was running out of fuel. 

Satellites like Intelsat-901 use a liquid chemical propellant called hydrazine for station-keeping: the tiny, constant orbital corrections that keep a satellite locked in place against the gravitational pulls of the Moon and Sun. 

Without it, Intelsat-901 would lose its grip on its assigned orbital slot. Its signals would degrade. And it would no longer be viable. 

For most of the history of spaceflight, that would have been the end of the story. The satellite would be retired, written off, and eventually nudged into an increasingly congested orbital junkyard. 

This time, a robotic spacecraft, MEV-1 (Mission Extension Vehicle-1), approached Intelsat-901, matched its speed to within fractions of a mile per hour, aligned itself with millimeter precision, and docked.

The automated craft latched onto the satellite and became its new propulsion and altitude-control system – extending its operational life by years. 

If you still think of space as a destination for chisel-chinned astronauts or wealthy tourists, this moment probably passed you by. But if you want to understand what the space economy is becoming – and how to profit – it was every bit as consequential as the first Moon landing. 

Because space is no longer just a destination. It’s a new layer of infrastructure above our heads – one that keeps navigation apps accurate, ATMs and payment networks time-stamped correctly, aircraft tracked across oceans, military forces coordinated across continents, and emergency responders connected when storms knock out ground networks. 

One day, it may also be where certain kinds of AI compute gets done – above the planet, powered by constant sunlight and cooled by the vacuum of space. 

And thanks to a tipoff from one of our newest projects here at TradeSmith – a system that tracks the market’s most profitable investment themes – it’s also a top investing theme for 2026. 

I’ll have more for you on this news “themes” tracker tool in future updates. Today, let’s look how you can get positioned for the next winners of the growing space economy. 

Why Autonomous Space Robotics Are Replacing Human Operators 

As we saw with Intelsat-901, once hardware is in orbit, humans become the bottleneck. 

Putting people in space is slow, dangerous, and extraordinarily expensive. Every crewed mission adds life-support systems, redundancy, training, and risk – costs that quickly overwhelm the economics of modern space operations. 

Space forces automation. 

Modern satellites don’t just collect data and wait for instructions from Earth. They now: 

• Monitor their own health 
• Adjust power and thermal loads automatically 
• Reroute around failures 
• Coordinate with other satellites 
• Decide which data is worth transmitting – and which isn’t 

Space robotics isn’t about humanoid robots floating around with tools. It’s about autonomous systems that can inspect, refuel, assemble, reposition, and defend assets without waiting for human input. 

The companies that master these autonomous systems – robotics, AI, and machine-driven decision-making – end up controlling a critical layer of the space economy. 

Last week, I talked about why the space economy has moved from the realm of science fiction into the real world. 

And I highlighted space-economy stock Rocket Lab (RKLB) – it launches small satellites into orbit and builds many of the spacecraft involved in these launches. 

Today, let’s look at another opportunity worth putting on your radar. 

Northrop Grumman: The Defense Giant Dominating Satellite Servicing Technology 

Northrop Grumman (NOC) isn’t a pure-play “space stock” in the way Rocket Lab is. 

It’s a diversified defense contractor with major businesses in aerospace systems, missile defense, stealth aircraft, cybersecurity, and national-security software. 

But it’s also a leading designer and operator of mission-critical autonomous space systems – including MEV-1, which it developed through its subsidiary SpaceLogistics. 

Northrop sits at the center of U.S. national-security space architecture. 

It builds: 

• Advanced satellites 
• Space-based sensors 
• Secure communications systems 
• Integrated command-and-control platforms 

These systems aren’t designed to phone home for instructions. 

They’re built to detect, decide, and respond on their own – whether that’s tracking missile launches, monitoring military activity near borders and conflict zones, or maintaining communications when terrestrial networks are degraded or jammed. 

Satellites can’t wait for humans to intervene. They have to manage power, reroute signals, prioritize data, and maintain mission integrity automatically. 

That’s been Northrop Grumman’s business model for years. 

Buy Ahead of This Bullish Seasonal Window 

All of this makes NOC a great long-term play on the space economy. But even long-term holdings benefit from better timing. 

That’s where another of my favorite TradeSmith tools, Seasonality, comes in. 

If you don’t know already, seasonality is the study of recurring calendar-based market patterns – specific times of year when stocks and sectors tend to move. 

Most of these patterns are invisible to the naked eye. But our Seasonality software combs through decades of market data and more than 2 quintillion (that’s 2 million trillion) data points to find those patterns in what, to many, looks like random noise. 

When we look at Northrop Grumman’s historical trading patterns, a clear window stands out next month. Take a look:

As you can see, the Feb. 12 to March 6 window (green shaded area to the left) has delivered gains more than 90% of the time. And the average return during that bullish seasonal window is just under 6%.

Why does this happen?  

There’s no single cause. But defense stocks like Northrop often benefit from: 

• Post-earnings digestion early in the year 
• Budget visibility improving as government spending plans firm up 
• Institutional rebalancing after January positioning 

None of that guarantees a gain in any given year. ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½s don’t work that way. 

But patterns like this give disciplined investors an edge – a way to stack probabilities in their favor instead of relying on guesswork. 

And that’s how you build serious wealth over time. 

You can try out a trial version of our Seasonality tool right now by following this link to check these annual patterns on stocks you own or are thinking of buying.  

We’ve made it available to all TradeSmith Daily readers alongside this year’s big seasonality event, Prediction 2026.  

There are a bunch of important seasonal patterns coming up this month and beyond. And we want to make as many folks as possible are aware of what’s coming so they can prepare and profit.

The post This Defense Stock Has a 90% Win Rate Starting Feb. 12 appeared first on InvestorPlace.

As I write Wednesday afternoon, stocks are rallying sharply after President Trump announced he and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte have “formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland.”

The relief comes from Trump saying that as a result of this negotiation, he would no longer impose the punitive tariffs on European countries that were set to begin February 1.

As I write, details about the framework agreement remain unclear. But the announcement marks a stunning reversal in the ongoing controversy over Trump’s efforts to acquire Greenland for the U.S.

In yesterday’s Digest, we dove into Trump’s interest in taking control of the Danish territory. His recent statements had amped up global geopolitical fears, with Trump threatening 10% tariffs starting next month – escalating to 25% in June – on eight NATO countries that had increased their military presence in Greenland.

That uncertainty triggered yesterday’s selloff, the worst day for stocks since October 10. But earlier today, during his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump said:

    I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force.

That comment sparked an initial relief rally. Then came this afternoon’s announcement of a “framework” deal, sending stocks even higher.

We’ll keep tracking this story as it develops. But for now, markets are happy again.

And there’s one market in particular that’s very happy…

Natural gas prices are surging on the back of cold weather gripping much of the country

I don’t use “surging” lightly.

Look at what’s happening on this one-year chart for the price of natural gas.

Source: Trading Economics

Here’s CNBC from yesterday:

Prices surged 25%, or 78 cents, to $3.89 per million British thermal units by 10 a.m. ET, putting natural gas futures on pace for the best day in four years.

Prices are up another 20% here on Wednesday.

Legendary investor Louis Navellier flagged this in yesterday’s Growth Investor Flash Alert podcast:

Natural gas prices are up quite a bit because it’s cold in the Northeast and Midwest, and that cold has extended into the South, affecting places like Atlanta.

So, because we have big metro areas cold right now and the cold may persist for a while, natural gas prices are up.

“Cold” doesn’t quite describe it – it’s really cold.

According to the National Weather Service, wind chills could hit -50 degrees Fahrenheit across the Upper Midwest and Northern Plains. By Sunday, that sub-zero weather system is expected to expand into the Ohio Valley, then the Northeast.

But according to Eric Fry, this short-term weather-driven spike in natural gas prices is just the beginning of a much bigger story

In his 2026 forecast for Fry’s Investment Report, Eric – our macro investing expert – highlighted several structural tailwinds that should keep natural gas prices elevated, and natural gas stocks climbing, throughout the year.

Here’s Eric:

The United States has become the world’s largest LNG exporter.

LNG plants along the Gulf Coast now absorb more than 14% of total U.S. natural gas production, and ship it to destinations in Europe and Asia.

Once an LNG facility starts up, its demand does not fluctuate with seasonal weather conditions. It pulls gas like a vacuum cleaner, nonstop, year-round, as long as a hefty price differential exists between pricey European gas and cheap U.S. gas.

Add in surging demand from AI data centers – which could boost demand for natural gas by 20% to 45% over the next five years – and you have a recipe for sustained higher prices.

So, how do you play it?

For an easy one-click option, check out XOP, State Street’s SPDR S&P Oil & Gas Exploration & Production ETF. It holds a handful of oil/gas heavyweights, including Exxon (XOM), Occidental (OXY), and ConocoPhillips (COP).

If you’re looking for a more concentrated bet, one of Eric’s top picks is Devon Energy Corp. (DVN), one of the leading producers in the Delaware Basin.

For years, Devon’s natural gas has been “stranded” – trapped by insufficient pipeline capacity. But two major pipeline projects are changing that equation. The Matterhorn Express came online earlier this year, and the Blackcomb Pipeline will enter service in the second half of 2025.

Together, these pipelines give Devon direct access to premium Gulf Coast pricing and to the booming LNG export terminals.

Despite these improving fundamentals, Devon trades at less than nine times forward earnings – barely half the valuation of the average natural gas stock.

As Eric puts it:

When investors stop pricing Devon as a stranded-gas problem and start pricing it as a beneficiary of a higher-floor natural-gas regime, the stock will merit a meaningfully higher multiple.

It looks like investors are beginning to make this pricing adjustment. As you can see below, DVN is up 10% over the last nine days while the S&P has fallen 1%.

Eric says that Devon is a “Buy” below $45.00.

To keep up with all of Eric’s latest natural gas research and updates on DVN, click here to learn about joining him in Fry’s Investment Report.

Meanwhile, Luke Lango says 2026 could be the breakout year for space stocks

Let’s turn to space.

According to our hypergrowth investing expert Luke Lango of Innovation Investor, three major catalysts are converging to create what he calls a “rare and bullish setup” for space stocks in 2026.

First, there’s the White House Space Executive Order signed in mid-December, titled “Ensuring American Space Superiority.”

It sets hard deadlines: a crewed Moon landing by 2028, a commercial pathway to replace the International Space Station by 2030, and a mandate to shift government contracts toward “commercial-first” procurement.

Here’s Luke on why this matters:

This is important because the fastest way to create winners is to change how contracts are awarded.

When Washington shifts from cost-plus, bespoke contracting to commercial-first, fixed-price models, a different set of companies starts to win.

Second, there’s the emergence of what Luke calls “Space AI” – the idea of orbital data centers.

It sounds absurd until you realize that Nvidia (NVDA) is already profiling startups pursuing space-based data centers. Alphabet (GOOGL) is partnering with Planet Labs (PL) on “Project Suncatcher” to launch space-based Google AI data centers by 2027. And Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk has talked about using SpaceX to provide orbital computing for his AI company, xAI.

Back to Luke:

We are witnessing the birth of Space AI, the next multi-trillion-dollar hardware supercycle.

The ‘AI Power Wall’ on Earth is forcing hyperscalers to look toward orbital data centers for inference and radiation-hardened edge computing.

Third, there’s the potential SpaceX IPO in 2026 – which could raise $25 billion-plus and value the company above $1 trillion.

Luke believes this event would “re-rate the entire space sector overnight,” much like Tesla’s success legitimized the broader EV industry.

What’s the portfolio action step?

Luke highlights Rocket Lab (RKLB) as a top opportunity.

The company just landed an $805 million contract in December to deliver 18 missile warning satellites – its largest deal yet, nearly 50% larger than its entire 2024 revenue.

By the way, a huge “congratulations” to Luke’s Early Stage Investor subscribers. After getting into RKLB back in June 2022, they’re up 1,002% as I write on Wednesday.

Luke also points to Planet Labs (PL), which secured a $260 million contract from Germany in July 2025 and saw its contract backlog surge 245% year over year. The stock is up over 477% over the last 52 weeks.

Luke’s bottom line:

If you’re looking for a way to keep playing AI upside while everyone fights over the same data center trades… space is a natural new hunting ground.

For Luke’s complete analysis of the Space AI opportunity – including the small company he believes sits at the center of this trillion-dollar disruption – click here to watch his latest briefing.

Finally, if you missed Keith Kaplan’s “Prediction” event yesterday, the replay is available now for a limited time

Yesterday morning, TradeSmith CEO Keith Kaplan hosted Prediction 2026, where he unveiled the company’s breakthrough Seasonality tool.

This next-gen trading tool is anchored in a simple but powerful insight: thousands of stocks show historically reliable windows – specific times of year when they tend to rise. Keith calls them “green days.”

TradeSmith’s software identifies these patterns with remarkable precision across roughly 5,000 stocks – down to the exact day.

Take Target (TGT). Over the past 15 years, between June 22 and July 21, the stock has risen an average of 5.2%, climbing 100% of the time. In 2025, it gained 10.3% during that window.

These aren’t one-off patterns. In an 18-year backtest, TradeSmith’s seasonal trading system generated 857% total growth – that’s more than double the S&P 500’s return over the same period.

During yesterday’s event, Keith walked through how the system works, why these patterns persist, and – most important – why January 28 is a critical date to watch as new seasonal windows are likely to be opening up.

Click here for all these details and to see the Seasonality tool in action.

We’ll keep you updated on all these stories here in the Digest.

Have a good evening,

Jeff Remsburg

The post How to Play the Surge in Natural Gas Prices appeared first on InvestorPlace.

If you play the lottery, you’re likely aware that one of the Powerball’s tri-weekly drawings is tonight. I mention this anticipated spectacle because of its stupefying statistics.

The odds of winning a prize in this multistate lottery are 1 in 38… while the odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million.

In other words, not great. That’s a small needle, large haystack.

So, let’s take a look at something with a better chance of happening…

1 in 6.

That’s the amount of people using generative AI tools worldwide, according to a recent report from Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) AI Economy Institute.

The report says that “global adoption of artificial intelligence continued to rise in the second half of 2025, increasing by 1.2 percentage points compared to the first half of the year.”

And the odds that AI usage will rise in 2026 are virtually 100%. That means AI everywhere, all the time. In our personal, everyday lives… and, as of now, in our professional lives.

Last week, Anthropic rolled out Claude Cowork, a new AI agent that turns the Claude AI assistant from a chat-only helper into a more actions-oriented digital collaborator.

In other words, you can delegate work to Claude, and it actually does the work for you. No coding or complex setup required.

Now, although Cowork is working independently in some serious ways, that doesn’t mean it’s fully autonomous. When that occurs, we’ll be looking at artificial general intelligence (AGI).

To refresh, AGI is when computers gain free will. When this technology arrives, AI models will start coding themselves and training each other, and humans will no longer have any idea how or why the models are doing what they’re doing to achieve their goals.

However, Cowork is still able to perform tasks at a level that signals AGI’s imminent arrival.

So, in today’s Smart Money, I’ll explain the details behind Claude’s new AI agent and how it hints at what we should expect from AGI. Then, I’ll reveal the safest and most profitable ways to prepare.

That way, you can increase your odds of profiting on the Road to AGI – no lottery ticket required.

Let’s jump in…

Meet Your New AI Coworker

Think of Cowork, well… as your new, quick-learning coworker.

Instead of giving instructions, users can type a task for Cowork to carry out – like “reorganize messy folders,” “summarize documents,” or “assemble reports” – and the tool will simply do it.

Cowork can read, edit, create, rename, organize, and generate files inside authorized folders. Users can explicitly choose which folders the AI can work in. It will then only touch files in that space, and access can be revoked at any time.

And once a task is set, Cowork can work on it in the background and even handle multiple tasks sequentially or in parallel. It will report on progress as it works and ask for clarification before making major changes.

Cowork’s wide-ranging capabilities – paired with the fact that it doesn’t require constant context or retraining – set the stage for what we can expect from AGI.

With Anthropic’s new digital coworker, we are essentially being spoon-fed tastes of AGI before it permanently and irreversibly impacts the world… and rocks the stock market.

In an interview with Bloomberg just yesterday, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis says that he believes AGI has a 50% chance of arriving by 2030.

That’s 1-in-2 odds, and a bet worth making.

Here’s why…

How to Position Yourself Before AGI Arrives

Carefully investing in today’s AI market matters more now than ever before, especially since advancements are increasingly influencing market movement.

For example, after Anthropic’s announcement last Monday, the stocks of major enterprise software companies – including Salesforce Inc. (CRM), Adobe Inc. (ADBE), and Intuit Inc. (INTU) – pulled back significantly. That’s because tools like Cowork are a threat to recurring software-as-a-service (SaaS) revenues.

Clearly, investors believe that powerful, autonomous workplace AI will reduce demand for traditional software subscriptions.

But it’s important to note that powerful AI will also impact other, unsuspecting sectors.

Since ChatGPT kicked the AI Revolution into high gear back in 2022, the best ways to invest in the technology have evolved. What you’re betting on now may not be the sure thing it once was.

And what’s coming is more important to look at than ever.

Fortunately, I have an AGI roadmap to building “futureproof” wealth. Here are the avenues…

• Investing in AGI: buying stocks in companies that are providing key parts of the infrastructure that will accelerate AI technology toward AGI – for example, the raw materials found in AI chips.
• Investing alongside AGI: getting in on the companies primed to rise in tandem with superhuman AGI, like land companies set to profit off the data center boom.
• Investing in “stealth” AGI: betting on companies that will put AI to work for them with the goal of reaping huge gains in efficiency, productivity, and profits, like those in the biotech sector.

I share more companies and sectors that will benefit from AGI’s arrival in my special Road to AGI broadcast.

AI will continue to infiltrate our lives, taking over more day-to-day tasks that we’ll eventually leave entirely in its digital hands. Cowork is a clear precursor to this reality.

So, investors can either see this moment through a narrow lens, backing household AI names that have already captured most of their profit potential… or they can realize that investing in today’s AI age requires a multifaceted approach.

To increase your odds of profiting from AGI’s imminent arrival, click here.

Regards,

Eric Fry

The post With “1-in-2” Odds AGI Hits by 2030, Here’s What to Do Now appeared first on InvestorPlace.

Screens are red, and the bond market is revolting – because the narrative is terrifying: a fracturing NATO alliance, threats of crippling tariffs on Europe by February 1, and a violently spiking 30-Year Treasury yield threatening to wreck the housing market.

It looks like a chaotic geopolitical trainwreck.

But if you take a step back from the noise, you’ll realize this is a rerun. We have, in fact, seen this rodeo before. 

It’s this administration’s defining strategy. And it’s about to create a massive buying opportunity.

What is happening right now is not a random outburst; it is a brutally effective, high-stakes negotiation designed to secure the single most important supply chain of the next 20 years.

This ‘Greenland gambit’ is all about the physical inputs required to power the Artificial Intelligence revolution. 

And for investors who understand the playbook – the precedents that predict how it ends and the specific stocks to own when the deal is inevitably struck – the resulting relief rally will offer the clearest alpha opportunities of the year.

Why the U.S. Wants Greenland’s Rare Earths and Uranium

To understand this trade, strip away the diplomatic theater and look at the geology.

Here’s the problem: China controls roughly 90% of the processing for rare earth elements – the essential ingredients for the permanent magnets that go into every EV motor, wind turbine, and advanced robotics that will define the next phase of the AI boom.

Meanwhile, the AI data center buildout is hitting a hard ‘energy wall.’ And the only scalable, carbon-free solution to powering gigawatt-scale compute clusters is nuclear energy.

Controlling Greenland is a singular move to break China’s chokehold on critical minerals and secure the fuel for the Western AI infrastructure buildout. Deep under its melting ice sheet lies the Kvanefjeld deposit – arguably the world’s largest undeveloped resource of both rare earth elements and uranium. 

With this ‘Greenland Gambit,’ Trump is trying to buy energy independence for the 21st century.

Trump’s Greenland Negotiation Follows the Liberation Day Playbook

Why the chaos? Because that is the tactic.

There’s a strong pattern in the Trump negotiation style: create overwhelming, existential leverage to force a binary outcome. 

We saw exactly this during the “Liberation Day” tariff scare in April 2025. The threat of universal baseline tariffs promised to crush global trade. The markets tanked. Pundits predicted a global recession. Then, at the 11th hour, deals were cut. The tariffs were swapped for “managed trade agreements.” And the market surged in a massive relief rally, with the S&P 500 rising about 30% and the Nasdaq gaining 45% between April 21 and November 1.

The Greenland scenario is the “Liberation Day” playbook applied to a sovereign asset. The threats of auto tariffs on Germany and wine tariffs on France are the leverage designed to force the EU to pressure Denmark to the table.

The main difference this time – and the reason the bond market is so jittery – is that unlike a trade quota, you can’t split Greenland down the middle. It’s a binary asset. This creates a much narrower landing zone for a deal, increasing the apparent risk. 

But the mechanism remains the same: maximum pressure yields maximum concession.

Midterm Politics and Davos Timing to Force a U.S.-Greenland Deal

Right now, as markets convulse, the world’s financial and political elite are currently sipping champagne in Davos. There is no better backdrop for the kind of backroom, face-saving diplomacy required to resolve this.

But the biggest reason a deal will get done isn’t in Switzerland; it’s in the American suburbs. We are in a midterm election year.

The administration’s core domestic mandate is affordability – curing inflation and keeping the cost of living under control. And the current spike in Treasury yields is a direct threat to that mandate. If the 10- and 30-year yields continue to tear higher because foreign buyers are striking against U.S. debt, mortgage rates will skyrocket, crushing the housing market just as voters head to the polls.

Plus, actually implementing tariffs on all European goods would spike inflation instantly.

The administration cannot afford a self-inflicted slowdown or recession in a midterm year. This creates a “Midterm Collar” on the downside. The political reality forces them toward a resolution. They need a “win” they can sell to the base, not an economic crisis.

The Most Likely Greenland Outcome

Given the midterm pressure, the likelihood of a full-blown conflict where tariffs hit and NATO fractures is low; perhaps a 10- to 20% tail risk.

We think the overwhelming probability (80- to 90%) is that the “Liberation Day” pattern repeats. Denmark will not sell its citizens. But Trump will get what he actually needs: effective control over the resources.

Expect a “Joint Arctic Security & Resource Framework.” It will be framed as a massive diplomatic victory. The U.S. will gain exclusive military basing rights and, crucially, fast-track leases for American companies to develop the Kvanefjeld deposit, likely with royalties shared with Denmark and Greenland.

Europe gets security guarantees. Trump gets the minerals. The market gets relief.

How to Trade the Greenland Deal: Buying the Relief Rally

When a deal is announced, the relief rally will be ferocious. The fear premium evaporates. Money floods back in.

But don’t just buy the broad market. Buy the sectors that are directly unlocked by this deal. 

Our “Greenland Playbook” involves three distinct baskets that ride the wave of resource access, re-militarization, and AI infrastructure.

Basket One: Four Rare Earth Stocks to Buy Now

These are the highest-conviction plays. If the U.S. secures access to Greenland’s deposits, these companies could go from speculative miners to critical national security assets.

• The Processor: Energy Fuels (UUUU). This is arguably the most strategic play in the entire thesis. You can mine the rocks in Greenland, but you need somewhere to process them. Energy Fuels owns the White Mesa Mill in Utah: the only existing facility in the U.S. capable of processing the monazite sands that hold rare earths and uranium. When the Greenland deal closes, UUUU becomes the indispensable domestic hub for the entire supply chain.
• The Domestic Champion: MP Materials (MP). MP is already the premier Western rare earth producer, heavily backed by the Department of Defense. A deal in Greenland confirms that the U.S. is going “all in” on a non-China supply chain. MP will likely see increased government funding – and a complete repricing of its strategic value as the cornerstone of Western magnet production.
• The Direct Asset: Critical Metals Corp (CRML). For those seeking higher beta, CRML holds the Tanbreez project in Greenland. It is a massive, simpler rare earth deposit than Kvanefjeld. If the political doors open, this company’s asset suddenly becomes viable, making it a direct beneficiary of American capital flowing north.
• The Silver Lining: Hecla Mining (HL). Don’t overlook silver. It sits at the intersection of two major themes: it’s a monetary hedge against chaos, but it’s also a critical industrial metal for electronics and defense hardware. As North America’s largest producer, Hecla is the safest way to play the increased industrial demand.

Basket Two: Three Arctic Defense Plays on U.S. Military Expansion

Deal or no deal, the geopolitical temperature has permanently changed. The Arctic is now indisputably the next major theater of military competition with Russia and China. The “Greenland Threat” has solidified the need for a massive re-stocking of polar-capable hardware.

• The Shipbuilder: Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII). The U.S. has an “Icebreaker Gap.” Russia has dozens; the U.S. has barely two operational heavy icebreakers. You cannot project power in the Arctic without them. HII is the prime naval shipbuilder and will be the primary beneficiary of the inevitable congressional mandate to build a polar fleet.
• The Standard Bearer: Lockheed Martin (LMT). The F-35 is the fighter jet of the Arctic, flown by Norway, Denmark, and Finland. A deal that enhances U.S.-Nordic military integration further solidifies LMT’s dominance in the region.
• Eyes in the Sky: Rocket Lab (RKLB). Patrolling the vast, inhospitable Arctic with ships is difficult. The U.S. Space Force will increasingly rely on polar-orbiting satellite constellations for surveillance and communications. And Rocket Lab is a prime player in launching and managing these dedicated national security payloads.

Basket Three: AI Infrastructure Stocks Unlocked by Greenland Uranium

This is the “coiled spring” trade – where the real money gets made. 

High-growth tech has been compressed by the spike in interest rates. When the Greenland deal is signed and yields stabilize, tech will lead the relief rally.

But more importantly, the deal will signal a resolution to AI’s biggest bottleneck: energy.

• The Nuclear Option: Oklo Inc. (OKLO). Sam Altman backed Oklo for a reason. AI data centers need 24/7, carbon-free power that doesn’t rely on the volatile grid. Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are the solution. A deal that secures Greenland’s uranium supply is a massive green light for the nuclear renaissance required to power AI.
• The Utility Giant: Constellation Energy (CEG). As the largest owner of nuclear power plants in the U.S., CEG is the immediate answer for hyperscalers looking for baseload power right now. Securing long-term uranium supplies de-risks their entire business model.
• The Infrastructure Play: Vertiv Holdings (VRT). If the energy bottleneck clears and the data center buildout re-accelerates, cooling becomes critical. VRT is the leader in cooling these massive AI clusters. It is a high-beta play on the resumption of the infrastructure boom.
• The Titan: Nvidia (NVDA). When the macro fear subsides, the market returns to fundamentals. Nvidia remains the undisputed king of compute; and a stabilized rate environment allows its multiple to expand again.

The Greenland Investment Window Is Closing Fast

The headlines right now are designed to terrify you.

But if you believe, as the midterm political math suggests you should, that this is a high-stakes negotiation rather than the start of World War III, this is the buying opportunity.

The administration is using maximum leverage to solve a twenty-year strategic deficit in critical minerals. After a deal is struck in Davos, the window to buy the companies that form the backbone of this new supply chain at discounted prices will close.

The chaos is the opportunity – and those prepared will profit. 

Buy into the industrial supercycle this administration is throwing gasoline on.

The post The Greenland Gambit: Trading the World’s Most Dangerous Real Estate Deal appeared first on InvestorPlace.

If you’ve glanced at headlines this morning and thought, “Wait…Greenland? Huh?” – you’re not alone.

President Trump’s renewed interest in Greenland has suddenly pushed its way to the top of the news cycle, and many people are trying to wrap their minds around why.

Here’s the short version of what’s happening…

Greenland sits in a strategically critical location between North America and Europe, right along key Arctic shipping routes that are becoming more accessible as ice melts. It’s also rich in rare earth minerals, such as neodymium, dysprosium, praseodymium – the same materials we’ve profiled for years here in the Digest.

These critical materials are used in everything from smartphones to EVs to advanced military hardware. Just as importantly, they’re at the heart of our trade conflict with China – China has them. The U.S. largely doesn’t.

So, potential U.S. control of Greenland isn’t about real estate. It’s about supply chains, national security, and long-term economic leverage in a world increasingly defined by resource competition.

Of course, Greenland isn’t simply there for the taking. It’s controlled by Denmark, a member of NATO and the EU. Meanwhile, the Danish government and people of Greenland haven’t exactly been enthusiastic about potential new U.S. ownership.

Trump’s response? Economic pressure.

Cooperation on Greenland could mean smoother trade relations. Resistance could mean tariffs.

Here’s CNN:

The president announced Saturday that he would impose 10% tariffs on February 1 on goods from Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

It would increase to 25% if an agreement is not reached by June 1.

For some perspective, here’s how legendary investor Louis Navellier framed it this morning. From this morning’s Flash Alert in Growth Investor:

This is classic Trump-style negotiation, the market is reacting to the rising geopolitical noise.

I don’t want you to worry. I think any pullback in our powerful tech stocks, especially the data center-related stocks and semis, are all good buys right now.

But all this will be clarified tomorrow when President Trump gives his speech in Davos, and we shall see. So, don’t worry about all the gyrations and distractions. The U.S. is just asserting its leadership.

So, this is going to be interesting to watch.

Louis’ overall take: this is theater with a purpose. Watch for clarity after Davos, but don’t overreact to the noise.

But Greenland and European tariff threats aren’t the only Trump trade story investors need to track.

The coming weeks could bring fireworks for a related – but very different – reason that’s been quietly tying Wall Street in knots for months.

Over the coming weeks, we may finally get an answer to the question that’s been hanging over Wall Street for months

Are Trump’s tariffs illegal – and is the Supreme Court about to say so?

If that sounds dramatic, it’s because it is.

Right now, traders, economists, and portfolio managers are watching the Supreme Court calendar closely – because a ruling on Trump’s tariffs could arrive at any moment, even though it’s now unlikely to be this week.

Coming into this morning, court watchers believed we could get a ruling because the Supreme Court had scheduled Tuesday as an opinion-release day. But when the Court released its opinions earlier today, the tariff case wasn’t among them – and most legal analysts now don’t expect a decision this week.

Still, markets don’t wait for certainty – they price risk. And this ruling carries enormous implications for inflation, corporate margins, and presidential power, which is why it’s worth understanding now.

Most court watchers now believe the ruling will arrive later this month or in February, once the Court moves deeper into its opinion calendar. SCOTUSblog reports that February 20 is emerging as a widely expected opinion date.

Still, the case has been fully argued and is ready for decision. While unlikely this week, the Court could theoretically drop its ruling at any time without warning.

That’s why you’ve been hearing so much chatter about it recently – and why it’s worth understanding the implications now, before markets have to react in real time.

Given what’s at stake, let’s slow everything down and walk through what’s happening, why timing matters, and what different outcomes might mean for your portfolio.

Why is everyone watching the Supreme Court right now?

Tariffs are set by Congress. That’s straight out of the Constitution.

But in 2025, the Trump administration imposed broad tariffs using an emergency-powers law from the 1970s – the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). That law was originally designed to let presidents respond quickly to national emergencies by restricting trade or financial flows.

The legal challenge that the Supreme Court is deciding on boils down to a simple question with major consequences:

Does “regulating” or “blocking” imports also mean the president can tax them?

So far, some lower courts have said no. Their reasoning was that tariffs are taxes, and Congress never clearly gave the President the power to impose them under IEEPA.

Now the Supreme Court is weighing in.

And because this case affects prices, inflation, corporate profits, and even how much power future presidents have over the economy, Wall Street is heavily invested in the outcome.

The three most likely ways things could go

Let’s walk through how this might play out, and what each scenario could mean for your portfolio positioning.

Path #1: The Court Upholds the Tariffs

In this scenario, the Supreme Court sides with the Trump Administration and rules that the President does have authority under IEEPA to impose tariffs during emergencies.

If that happens, the immediate market reaction would likely be muted because it preserves the status quo (perhaps it falls some on disappointment).

Tariffs stay in place. Trade friction remains part of the landscape. And inflation pressures tied to import costs don’t suddenly disappear.

So, which companies might hold up better here?

• Some domestic manufacturers shielded from foreign competition
• Select industrial and materials companies
• Firms already structured around a higher-tariff world

Meanwhile, the losers might be…

• Retailers and consumer brands dependent on imported goods
• Companies with thin margins and global supply chains

This outcome wouldn’t be a shock, but it wouldn’t be a relief either.

Path #2: Tariffs Are Struck Down (Narrow Ruling)

This is the cleanest “tariffs lose” outcome.

The Court could rule that IEEPA simply does not authorize tariffs, full stop. Basically, they conclude that Congress never gave the President that power in this law.

If that happens, Wall Street would likely interpret it as trade friction easing – at least temporarily. And we’re likely to see some market parties get going.

This is because lower import costs can mean lower prices… lower prices can mean easing inflation pressure… and easing inflation can support bonds and rate-sensitive stocks.

Likely near-term winners in this situation:

• Consumer discretionary stocks, especially retailers (Target (TGT), Walmart (WMT))
• Global brands relying on overseas manufacturing (Nike (NKE), Apple (AAPL))
• Transportation and logistics companies tied to trade volume (FedEx (FDX), Union Pacific (UNP))
• Potentially bonds, if investors begin pricing in disinflation

Likely laggards:

• Domestic producers that benefited from tariff protection
• Companies priced for aggressive reshoring trends

This would likely be the most straightforward “market-friendly” ruling – at least initially.

Path #3: Tariffs Are Struck Down (Broad Power Ruling)

This is the biggest, most complex outcome.

Here, the Court wouldn’t just say “IEEPA doesn’t allow tariffs.” It would say something closer to:

Congress cannot hand this much economic power to the president without clear limits.

That would have implications well beyond tariffs.

ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½s might initially cheer for the same reasons as Path #2, but then volatility could kick in quickly because it means the saga wouldn’t be over.

The White House has said that if the Supreme Court rules against them, they could explore other legal avenues to reimpose tariffs. This ruling would open the door to that. So, this path would bring some relief but also some uncertainty – a mix that Wall Street doesn’t always love.

Two critical follow-up questions that will determine actual market impact

Regardless of which path the Court takes, if tariffs are struck down, two huge practical questions follow immediately:

The difference between “tariffs end today” and “tariffs phase out over six months” dramatically affects how companies and consumers respond.

Billions of dollars in tariffs have already been collected. If refunds are ordered, that’s a massive cash injection back into corporate balance sheets – and potentially a significant hit to Treasury finances.

Those answers affect cash flows, Treasury finances, and short-term market psychology.

In other words, whenever the ruling arrives, it won’t really put this issue to bed – it will just start the next chapter.

So, what’s the action step?

Yes, this is a headline-risk event, but it’s not a reason to overhaul a sound portfolio overnight.

When the ruling eventually arrives – whether in late January or February – markets might swing violently in the first hours. Certain sectors could gap up or down. But for diversified investors, this is more about volatility than fundamentals. And here’s something important to remember…

The balance of risk actually skews slightly bullish.

If the Court upholds the tariffs, we’re largely in the same world we’ve already been living in.

And even if the ruling is broader and messier, that still mostly preserves the existing backdrop – just with more short-term noise.

But if the Court cleanly strikes the tariffs down, that’s the one outcome that represents a meaningful positive shift for inflation expectations and corporate margins.

In other words, the worst-case scenarios mostly look like “more of the same,” while the best-case scenario offers relief for thousands of American businesses.

Regardless of the outcome, moments like this tend to reward investors who:

• Don’t panic on the first headline
• Understand why markets are moving
• And recognize that policy battles rarely end with a single court ruling

So, whether this week brings real clarity – or just the next chapter in a longer legal fight – the advantage belongs to investors who are prepared, not reactive.

Have a good evening,

Jeff Remsburg

(Disclaimer: I own WMT and AAPL)

The post Why Greenland, Tariffs, and the Supreme Court Are Colliding appeared first on InvestorPlace.

Over the past few days, I’ve shared research from my colleague Keith Kaplan showing that markets often move in repeatable seasonal patterns – and that those patterns are closely tied to human behavior and timing.
And earlier this morning, Keith walked readers through his latest research during a live presentation focused on what these patterns could mean as we head into 2026.

Now, in the piece below, Keith draws on a striking historical example to explain how the same principle applies to the stock market, and how mapping patterns over time can reveal opportunities most investors never see.

If you watched his Prediction 2026 event this morning, this essay adds important context to the ideas Keith shared. And if you missed it, you can watch the full presentation here before reading on…

****

In August 1854, a terrifying illness swept through Soho, London, during one of the hottest summers the city could remember.

People were dying in hours – by the hundreds.

Their bodies lost fluid so fast that their skin shrank and their lips turned blue. Victims collapsed where they stood – on stairwells, in courtyards, on their doorsteps.

Medical authorities blamed “miasma” – or bad air – seeping from open drains, rotting refuse, and poorly ventilated slum housing. Newspapers warned of “poisonous vapors” rising from the city streets.

John Snow, a pioneering London physician, wasn’t convinced.

In earlier outbreaks, he’d noticed that people who did not share air were falling ill, while others who breathed the same air remained healthy. Instead, what the victims shared was water.

To test his suspicion, Snow mapped the Soho outbreak.

Armed with a notebook and a street map, he walked the neighborhood, marking each death with a short black line.

As the marks accumulated, a clear picture emerged. The deaths clustered around a single point – a public water pump on Broad Street.

The illness was cholera – a fast-moving waterborne bacterial disease – and when officials removed the pump handle, the outbreak stopped.

Once someone knew where to look, what looked like chaos turned out to be structured.

Many complex systems behave the same way. On the surface, they appear noisy and unpredictable. But when you step back and study them over time, recurring patterns begin to emerge.

The stock market is no different.

I know because my team and I at TradeSmith have developed cutting-edge software that identifies recurring seasonal patterns in thousands of stocks – specific times of year when they tend to rise and others when they tend to fall.

And there are some fast-approaching seasonal windows that you need to be aware of. That’s why we hosted an online event all about what’s coming – Prediction 2026 – this morning..

So, make sure to check out the replay here. Then read on for more on the seasonality phenomenon in markets and how, over the last 15 years, some stocks have followed their seasonality windows with 100% historical accuracy.

Seasonality Affects ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½s, Too

Commodity traders, for example, have long tracked planting and harvest cycles in crops like corn and wheat.

Energy traders watch seasonal demand shifts tied to winter heating and summer cooling.

The gold market has recurring seasonal tendencies, often strengthening during certain parts of the year tied to jewelry demand, central bank buying, and annual festivals in India and China.

And stock investors have studied phenomena like the January Effect for decades. Even Wall Street’s old saying – “Sell in May and go away” – comes from observed seasonal behavior, not theory.

But seasonality doesn’t just apply to commodities and the big stock market index. Every stock has its own seasons to rise or fall – a kind of summer and a kind of winter, too – year after year.

Big-box retailer Target (TGT) provides a good example.

As one of America’s largest retailers, this stock moves with the rhythms of consumer spending throughout the year. But for all the money won – and lost – on Target over the last few years, there’s one certainty…

Between June 22 and July 21, you want to buy the retail bellwether. Target has moved up an average of 5.2% during that summer period, rising 100% of the time over the past 15 years:

That’s 15 years of summertime price spikes, starting long before it fell under the pandemic-era spotlight. And in 2025, the pattern held true: Target rose 10.3% during its 29-day seasonally bullish window.

The chart you’re seeing above is from one of the breakthrough innovations from TradeSmith’s team of researchers, software engineers, and quant investors: our ground-breaking Trade Cycles Seasonality tool.

It’s an easy-to-use tool that can take one of thousands of commonly traded stocks, analyze its movements, and point out its strongest seasonality trends – with starting periods narrowed down to the day.

Here’s another example of a strong seasonality pattern, this time in Home Depot (HD):

Over the last 15 years, between June 15 and July 27, Home Depot’s share price has risen 93% of the time, with an average return of 4.7%.

And in 2025, the pattern held true again. It rose from $349.31 on June 16 to $372.69 on July 28 – a 6.7% gain in just over a month.

A Powerful New System for Seasonal Profits

Target and Home Depot are just two examples among many others. 

Our development team has fine-tuned this tool to uncover seasonality cycles in stocks, stock market indexes like the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, as well as in currencies and commodities.

By crunching the data and compiling the historical movements of thousands of different assets and running 50,000 tests a day to analyze every stock in the major indexes, we’ve built a powerful system to help predict the biggest jumps on 5,000 stocks.

Over our 18-year backtest, these seasonal trades delivered 857% in total growth. That’s more than twice what the S&P 500 delivered over the same time.

Even in 2007, the worst year in our testing, we saw an average gain of 2.5% per trade and an average annual return of 37.9%. That’s close to four times the long-term average annual gain of the S&P 500.

The question now: How can we make this powerful system work for you?

The Power of Seasonality Is Now in Your Hands

This morning during our Prediction 2026 webinar, I showed how our Seasonality tool can help you find the best time to buy and sell a stock – down to the day.

And as we start the new year, a new batch of these seasonal cycles is about to kick off…

And we’ll be sharing unfiltered access to the Seasonality tool and the top seasonal recommendations this year as part of our Trade Cycles trading advisory.

Go here now to check out the replay of the event.

Keith Kaplan
CEO, TradeSmith

The post The Hidden Science of Finding ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ Patterns Before Everyone Else appeared first on InvestorPlace.

This Week’s Ratings Changes:

Upgraded: Strong to Very Strong

Downgraded: Very Strong to Strong

Upgraded: Neutral to Strong

Downgraded: Strong to Neutral

Upgraded: Weak to Neutral

Downgraded: Neutral to Weak

Upgraded: Very Weak to Weak

Downgraded: Weak to Very Weak

To stay on top of my latest stock ratings, plug your holdings into Stock Grader, my proprietary stock screening tool. But, you must be a subscriber to one of my premium services.

To learn more about my premium service, Growth Investor, and get my latest picks, go here. Or, if you are a member of one of my premium services, you can go here to get started.

Sincerely,

Louis Navellier

Editor, ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ 360

The post Five Below Upgraded, Spotify Downgraded: Updated Rankings on Top Blue-Chip Stocks appeared first on InvestorPlace.

If you need help from our Customer Service Department, they’ll be happy to assist you when we reopen tomorrow.

At first glance, markets can look chaotic. But when you step back and study them over time, patterns begin to emerge.

That’s the premise that Keith Kaplan, CEO of our corporate partner TradeSmith, opens with in today’s guest essay. He provides a historical example showing how what once looked muddled revealed a clear structure once someone knew where to look. Keith argues the stock market behaves much the same way.

In his piece below, he explains how seasonal patterns quietly shape thousands of stocks – recurring windows when certain names tend to rise while others stall or fall. They’re stock-specific patterns, identified over decades of data and measured down to the day. Keith shows how these patterns have repeated with striking consistency across different market environments.

Today’s essay sets the stage for Keith’s Prediction 2026 event tomorrow, January 20, at 10 a.m. Eastern, where he’ll expand on this research and explain how investors can apply it in real time. Click here to register today.

Enough introduction – I’ll let Keith take it from here.

Have a good evening,
Jeff Remsburg

In August 1854, a terrifying illness swept through Soho, London, during one of the hottest summers the city could remember.

People were dying in hours – by the hundreds.

Their bodies lost fluid so fast that their skin shrank and their lips turned blue. Victims collapsed where they stood – on stairwells, in courtyards, on their doorsteps.

Medical authorities blamed “miasma” – or bad air – seeping from open drains, rotting refuse, and poorly ventilated slum housing. Newspapers warned of “poisonous vapors” rising from the city streets.

John Snow, a pioneering London physician, wasn’t convinced.

In earlier outbreaks, he’d noticed that people who did not share air were falling ill, while others who breathed the same air remained healthy. Instead, what the victims shared was water.

To test his suspicion, Snow mapped the Soho outbreak.

Armed with a notebook and a street map, he walked the neighborhood, marking each death with a short black line.

As the marks accumulated, a clear picture emerged. The deaths clustered around a single point – a public water pump on Broad Street.

A copy of John Snow’s 1854 map of deaths in Soho, London

The illness was cholera – a fast-moving waterborne bacterial disease – and when officials removed the pump handle, the outbreak stopped.

Once someone knew where to look, what looked like chaos turned out to be structured.

Many complex systems behave the same way. On the surface, they appear noisy and unpredictable. But when you step back and study them over time, recurring patterns begin to emerge.

The stock market is no different.

I know because my team and I at TradeSmith have developed cutting-edge software that identifies recurring seasonal patterns in thousands of stocks – specific times of year when they tend to rise and others when they tend to fall.

And there are some fast-approaching seasonal windows that you need to be aware of. That’s why we’re hosting an online event all about what’s coming – Prediction 2026 – next Tuesday, January 20, at 10 a.m. Eastern.

Ahead of the event, we’ve unlocked a trial version of our groundbreaking seasonal software. It allows you to look for seasonality patterns in the stocks you own or are thinking of buying.

So, make sure to register for that here to unlock your free access. Then read on for more on the seasonality phenomenon in markets and how, over the last 15 years, some stocks have followed their seasonality windows with 100% historical accuracy.

Seasonality Affects ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½s, Too

Commodity traders, for example, have long tracked planting and harvest cycles in crops like corn and wheat.

Energy traders watch seasonal demand shifts tied to winter heating and summer cooling.

The gold market has recurring seasonal tendencies, often strengthening during certain parts of the year tied to jewelry demand, central bank buying, and annual festivals in India and China.

And stock investors have studied phenomena like the January Effect for decades. Even Wall Street’s old saying – “Sell in May and go away” – comes from observed seasonal behavior, not theory.

But seasonality doesn’t just apply to commodities and the big stock market index. Every stock has its own seasons to rise or fall – a kind of summer and a kind of winter, too – year after year.

Big-box retailer Target (TGT) provides a good example.

As one of America’s largest retailers, this stock moves with the rhythms of consumer spending throughout the year. But for all the money won – and lost – on Target over the last few years, there’s one certainty…

Between June 22 and July 21, you want to buy the retail bellwether. Target has moved up an average of 5.2% during that summer period, rising 100% of the time over the past 15 years:

That’s 15 years of summertime price spikes, starting long before it fell under the pandemic-era spotlight. And in 2025, the pattern held true: Target rose 10.3% during its 29-day seasonally bullish window.

The chart you’re seeing above is from one of the breakthrough innovations from TradeSmith’s team of researchers, software engineers, and quant investors: our ground-breaking Trade Cycles Seasonality tool.

It’s an easy-to-use tool that can take one of thousands of commonly traded stocks, analyze its movements, and point out its strongest seasonality trends – with starting periods narrowed down to the day.

Here’s another example of a strong seasonality pattern, this time in Home Depot (HD):

Over the last 15 years, between June 15 and July 27, Home Depot’s share price has risen 93% of the time, with an average return of 4.7%.

And in 2025, the pattern held true again. It rose from $349.31 on June 16 to $372.69 on July 28 – a 6.7% gain in just over a month.

A Powerful New System for Seasonal Profits

Target and Home Depot are just two examples among many others. 

Our development team has fine-tuned this tool to uncover seasonality cycles in stocks, stock market indexes like the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, as well as in currencies and commodities.

By crunching the data and compiling the historical movements of thousands of different assets and running 50,000 tests a day to analyze every stock in the major indexes, we’ve built a powerful system to help predict the biggest jumps on 5,000 stocks.

Over our 18-year backtest, these seasonal trades delivered 857% in total growth. That’s more than twice what the S&P 500 delivered over the same time.

Even in 2007, the worst year in our testing, we saw an average gain of 2.5% per trade and an average annual return of 37.9%. That’s close to four times the long-term average annual gain of the S&P 500.

The question now: How can we make this powerful system work for you?

The Power of Seasonality Is Now in Your Hands

Go here to register for access to a “unlocked” version of TradeSmith’s groundbreaking Seasonality tool.

Then you can explore the results of our powerful research for the stocks you own or are thinking of buying. It’s available online until Monday, January 19.

Then on Tuesday, January 20, at 10 a.m. Eastern during our Prediction 2026 webinar, I’ll show you how our Seasonality tool can help you find the best time to buy and sell a stock – down to the day.

And as we start the new year, a new batch of these seasonal cycles is about to kick off…

And we’ll be sharing unfiltered access to the Seasonality tool and the top seasonal recommendations this year as part of our Trade Cycles trading advisory.

Go here now to register for the event – and give TradeSmith’s Seasonality tool a try, free of charge, before the big event.

I hope to see you there!

Keith Kaplan
CEO, TradeSmith

The post The Calendar Effect That’s Beaten the S&P 500 appeared first on InvestorPlace.

They’ve created a system that spots specific market patterns and foresees the biggest jumps on 5,000 stocks, signaling investors the most profitable times to enter or exit a trade – and potentially double your money.

On Tuesday, January 20, at 10 a.m. Eastern, TradeSmith is debuting this Seasonality tool at their special Prediction 2026 event – and I urge you to tune in.

Plus, by signing up for the event, you’ll receive free access to try out the tool yourself.

Today, TradeSmith CEO Keith Kaplan will share more details about the power of understanding market patterns… and how you can join in on doubling your money in the New Year.

But before you dive in, please note that the U.S. stock market and InvestorPlace offices – including the Customer Service department – will be closed tomorrow, January 19, in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Our regular hours resume on Tuesday, January 20, at 9 a.m. Eastern time.

Now, take it away, Keith…

In August 1854, a terrifying illness swept through Soho, London, during one of the hottest summers the city could remember.

People were dying in hours – by the hundreds.

Their bodies lost fluid so fast that their skin shrank and their lips turned blue. Victims collapsed where they stood – on stairwells, in courtyards, on their doorsteps.

Medical authorities blamed “miasma” – or bad air – seeping from open drains, rotting refuse, and poorly ventilated slum housing. Newspapers warned of “poisonous vapors” rising from the city streets.

John Snow, a pioneering London physician, wasn’t convinced.

In earlier outbreaks, he’d noticed that people who did not share air were falling ill, while others who breathed the same air remained healthy. Instead, what the victims shared was water.

To test his suspicion, Snow mapped the Soho outbreak.

Armed with a notebook and a street map, he walked the neighborhood, marking each death with a short black line.

As the marks accumulated, a clear picture emerged. The deaths clustered around a single point – a public water pump on Broad Street.

A copy of John Snow’s 1854 map of deaths in Soho, London

The illness was cholera – a fast-moving waterborne bacterial disease – and when officials removed the pump handle, the outbreak stopped.

Once someone knew where to look, what looked like chaos turned out to be structured.

Many complex systems behave the same way. On the surface, they appear noisy and unpredictable. But when you step back and study them over time, recurring patterns begin to emerge.

The stock market is no different.

I know because my team and I at TradeSmith have developed cutting-edge software that identifies recurring seasonal patterns in thousands of stocks – specific times of year when they tend to rise and others when they tend to fall.

And there are some fast-approaching seasonal windows that you need to be aware of. That’s why we’re hosting an online event all about what’s coming – Prediction 2026 – next Tuesday, January 20, at 10 a.m. Eastern.

Ahead of the event, we’ve unlocked a trial version of our groundbreaking seasonal software. It allows you to look for seasonality patterns in the stocks you own or are thinking of buying.

So, make sure to register for that here to unlock your free access. Then read on for more on the seasonality phenomenon in markets and how, over the last 15 years, some stocks have followed their seasonality windows with 100% historical accuracy.

Seasonality Affects ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½s, Too

Commodity traders, for example, have long tracked planting and harvest cycles in crops like corn and wheat.

Energy traders watch seasonal demand shifts tied to winter heating and summer cooling.

The gold market has recurring seasonal tendencies, often strengthening during certain parts of the year tied to jewelry demand, central bank buying, and annual festivals in India and China.

And stock investors have studied phenomena like the January Effect for decades. Even Wall Street’s old saying – “Sell in May and go away” – comes from observed seasonal behavior, not theory.

But seasonality doesn’t just apply to commodities and the big stock market index. Every stock has its own seasons to rise or fall – a kind of summer and a kind of winter, too – year after year.

Big-box retailer Target (TGT) provides a good example.

As one of America’s largest retailers, this stock moves with the rhythms of consumer spending throughout the year. But for all the money won – and lost – on Target over the last few years, there’s one certainty…

Between June 22 and July 21, you want to buy the retail bellwether. Target has moved up an average of 5.2% during that summer period, rising 100% of the time over the past 15 years:

That’s 15 years of summertime price spikes, starting long before it fell under the pandemic-era spotlight. And in 2025, the pattern held true: Target rose 10.3% during its 29-day seasonally bullish window.

The chart you’re seeing above is from one of the breakthrough innovations from TradeSmith’s team of researchers, software engineers, and quant investors: our ground-breaking Trade Cycles Seasonality tool.

It’s an easy-to-use tool that can take one of thousands of commonly traded stocks, analyze its movements, and point out its strongest seasonality trends – with starting periods narrowed down to the day.

Here’s another example of a strong seasonality pattern, this time in Home Depot (HD):

Over the last 15 years, between June 15 and July 27, Home Depot’s share price has risen 93% of the time, with an average return of 4.7%.

And in 2025, the pattern held true again. It rose from $349.31 on June 16 to $372.69 on July 28 – a 6.7% gain in just over a month.

A Powerful New System for Seasonal Profits

Target and Home Depot are just two examples among many others. 

Our development team has fine-tuned this tool to uncover seasonality cycles in stocks, stock market indexes like the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, as well as in currencies and commodities.

By crunching the data and compiling the historical movements of thousands of different assets and running 50,000 tests a day to analyze every stock in the major indexes, we’ve built a powerful system to help predict the biggest jumps on 5,000 stocks.

Over our 18-year backtest, these seasonal trades delivered 857% in total growth. That’s more than twice what the S&P 500 delivered over the same time.

Even in 2007, the worst year in our testing, we saw an average gain of 2.5% per trade and an average annual return of 37.9%. That’s close to four times the long-term average annual gain of the S&P 500.

The question now: How can we make this powerful system work for you?

The Power of Seasonality Is Now in Your Hands

Go here to register for access to a “unlocked” version of TradeSmith’s groundbreaking Seasonality tool.

Then you can explore the results of our powerful research for the stocks you own or are thinking of buying. It’s available online until Monday, January 19.

Then on Tuesday, January 20, at 10 a.m. Eastern during our Prediction 2026 webinar, I’ll show you how our Seasonality tool can help you find the best time to buy and sell a stock – down to the day.

And as we start the new year, a new batch of these seasonal cycles is about to kick off…

And we’ll be sharing unfiltered access to the Seasonality tool and the top seasonal recommendations this year as part of our Trade Cycles trading advisory.

Go here now to register for the event – and give TradeSmith’s Seasonality tool a try, free of charge, before the big event.

I hope to see you there!

Keith Kaplan
CEO, TradeSmith

The post How to Spot ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ Patterns That Lead to Consistent Wins appeared first on InvestorPlace.

This list spans from the ultraconservative FactSet to the high-growth startup Evolv, and features virtually everything in between. 

Healthcare… basic materials… tech… 

In fact, the only common thread is that they’re all meant to be bought and held for at least a year for maximum returns. (I’ll be keeping you posted in the coming months on how these firms do.) 

But I also realize not everyone is so patient. In fact, there’s plenty of evidence that faster-moving investors routinely outperform their buy-and-hold counterparts… provided they have a proven system that powers their trades. It’s why high-frequency traders can earn billions even as buy-and-hold investors make millions. 

Nowhere is this clearer than at our partners at TradeSmith. Our quant-focused friends have created a system that has been running 50,000 tests a day across 33 years of stock market history. And it’s powered by a secret pioneered by a hedge fund that’s turned every $100 investment since its inception into $2.1 million. 

Essentially, that means TradeSmith now has an algorithm that pinpoints the optimal times to buy and sell virtually any U.S. stock. And it does so with incredible accuracy that can help any short-term trader. 

Here’s proof… 

Exactly this time last year, I used an earlier version of their system to identify three stocks to buy for a short holding period. And here’s how they did over the following 30 days: 

• Cheniere Energy Inc. (LNG): -3% 
• DraftKings Inc. (DKNG): +10% 
• Cloudflare Inc. (NET): +44% 
• Average: 17% 

If you held onto these stocks for the exact period recommended by TradeSmith’s algorithm (42 days on average), then you would have walked away with a 27% average return. 

I’ve used this quantitative tool to find other winners as well, including O’Reilly Automotive Inc. (ORLY) (+10% in just over two months) and Hanesbrands Inc. (HBI) (+43% in a month). These are not isolated wins. 

Now, our friends at TradeSmith believe we’re entering some of the best conditions yet for using their Trade Cycles algorithm, and they want you to be a part of that story. You can try out their software on the stocks you own by registering for a free, limited-time trial version here. They’re making it available ahead of their Prediction 2026 event, all about the seasonal patterns they say we need to be aware of as the year kicks off (more on that in a minute).  

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with three more seasonal stocks to buy immediately, as a preview of their system. 

Seasonal Stock No. 1: The AI Gem 

The fourth quarter is a historically wonderful time for software firms. Managers at Fortune 500 companies all know that savings from one year can turn into permanent cuts the next, and so many use the opportunity to spend their “use it or lose it” budgets. 

That’s particularly good news for AI firm ServiceNow Inc. (NOW), my first “seasonal” pick from TradeSmith’s tool in this update. 

In short, ServiceNow is a rival of AI darling Palantir Technologies Inc. (PLTR). Both companies offer top-tier AI products that help customers make decisions, and Q4 is an excellent quarter for the pair. 

However, the two companies differ in their market strategy: 

• Palantir’s “secret sauce” is its ability to manage unstructured data. If you’re the U.S. Army with hundreds of suppliers using hundreds of different standards, then you need Palantir to pull this information together. 
• ServiceNow’s edge is its broad portfolio of AI tools. The company has specific products aimed at IT, customer service, human resources, app development, supply chains, and more.  

That means ServiceNow generates three times the sales of Palantir and is growing around 50% faster on a per-dollar basis. Its addressable market is far larger, and its product breadth makes cross-selling a breeze. 

Best of all, TradeSmith’s system is flagging now as the perfect time to buy ServiceNow. Shares of the AI firm trade at their best valuations since 2023, and history says investors can expect double-digit gains if they buy and hold through February 17. 

Seasonal Stock No. 2: The Media Spinoff 

My second pick from TradeSmith’s seasonality tool this week is Versant Media Group Inc. (VSNT), a recent spinoff from Comcast Corp. (CMCSA) that took many of NBCUniversal’s cable channels (including USA Network, CNBC, E!, Golf Channel) and digital assets (Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes) along with it. 

That’s because the fourth-quarter earnings season is also a phenomenal time for cable news companies. This is when advertisers mount their holiday-period advertising surge, creating a boost at Fox Corp. (FOXA), the Walt Disney Co. (DIS), and more. Here’s the graph for the former, which typically logs a 40% to 50% increase in revenues that quarter. 

Versant Media is an even better bet because shares have gone through a post-spinoff selloff. The firm only became independent on January 5, and ETFs have spent the past two weeks dumping VSNT shares because it’s no longer part of the S&P 500 or Nasdaq Composite indexes. We saw similar selloffs in GE Vernova Inc. (GEV), Chemours Co. (CC), and Kenvue Inc. (KVUE) after they split from their larger parent organizations. 

After that, spinoffs then typically recover sharply – 31.6% over 22 months, according to one study. Chemours shares rose 1,100% from their post-spinoff trough. 

In addition, Versant has: 

Together, that suggests Versant could see a double-digit pop in the near term. Though the spinoff is too recent to have its own graph in TradeSmith’s system, its data for Fox Corp, Disney, Warner Brothers (WBD) and other media firms show investors should hold Versant through February 20. 

Seasonal Stock No. 3: The Accounting Wizard 

My final pick from TradeSmith’s tool this week is Intuit Inc. (INTU), a firm best known for its TurboTax offering. In fact, this tax accounting software is so central to Intuit’s business that the firm ends its fiscal year on July 31 to match the tax filing season. 

Below, you can see how TradeSmith’s system has flagged that midyear period as a way to earn consistent 6.43% returns (green section in the middle of the graph). 

Intuit also owns QuickBooks, an accounting platform designed for small businesses. Over the past several years, AI has turned this software into an “outsourced CFO,” allowing many small companies to run without a dedicated finance team. Business owners can simply ask QuickBooks’ AI to help automate its accounting, and the system does much of the rest. 

The result is that Intuit is beginning to look like more typical software firms as well. Shares now rise going into calendar fourth-quarter earnings, creating a 6.11% bump in share prices (shown by the green section on the left side of the graph). 

I’m particularly bullish on Intuit this year because many provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill impact the 2025 accounting and tax year. These changes include: 

• No tax on tips or overtime 
• Additional senior deductions 
• Trump savings accounts 
• Restoration of 100% bonus depreciation and certain R&D expensing 
• And so on. 

In other words, Intuit’s performance this year could look much like its 2017-2018 surge, when the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) boosted demand to all-time highs. Shares jumped more than 80% during that period. That makes Intuit’s 13% selloff this week an excellent opportunity to buy in cheaply. The system recommends holding shares through February 25. 

The Importance of a System 

In the 1980s, hedge fund Bridgewater Associates almost went bankrupt after founder Ray Dalio made a mistake in his global macro forecasts. He expected a depression to happen after Mexico defaulted on its debt… and he turned out to be flat wrong.  

Dalio was forced to lay off all his employees and rebuild his firm from scratch. 

For his second try, Dalio used a more formal investment approach – something that would turn into the Pure Alpha strategy in 1991. This data-driven method involved strict investment rules, model-based signals, and a lot of computing power to churn out decisions. 

It was wildly successful. 

Today, Bridgewater Associates is one of the world’s largest hedge funds with almost $100 billion under management. Its flagship fund has returned 12% annually since 1991, turning every $10,000 invested into almost a half-million dollars. 

The TradeSmith system puts a similar strategy in your back pocket. Rather than guess which assets will go up or down (as Dalio did before 1982), TradeSmith’s algorithms give you the tools to make decisions based on historic data. 

You don’t even have to take my word for it. 

 TradeSmith has made a version of their Seasonality software available for you to explore now.  

They’ve unlocked access so you can see the seasonal “green days” for thousands of stocks ahead of their Prediction 2026 event. (reserve your spot by going here). 

It kicks off Tuesday, Jan. 20, at 10 a.m. ET. During that event, the folks from TradeSmith will be getting into more detail about the fast-approaching seasonality patterns you need to be aware of.  

They’ll also walk you through how they uncovered these patterns, why they persist even in chaotic markets, and how you can use them to guide real-world trading decisions. Click here to save your seat for that free event.

Please note that the InvestorPlace offices and the U.S. stock market will be closed on Monday in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. 

I’ll see you here next Sunday. 

Thomas Yeung, CFA

ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ Analyst, InvestorPlace 

Thomas Yeung is a market analyst and portfolio manager of the Omnia Portfolio, the highest-tier subscription at InvestorPlace. He is the former editor of Tom Yeung’s Profit & Protection, a free e-letter about investing to profit in good times and protecting gains during the bad.

The post 3 Seasonal Stocks to Buy Immediately appeared first on InvestorPlace.

Keith has spent years proving that markets don’t move as randomly as most people think. Beneath the daily noise, they run on a kind of calendar, driven by the same behavioral patterns that shape our own decisions. And today, we’ve invited Keith to explain how those rhythms show up in the data. 

His team has analyzed thousands of stocks and uncovered consistent seasonal windows – moments when individual stocks are historically more likely to rise or fall – with 83% accuracy. That insight forms the foundation of Keith’s work at TradeSmith and will take center stage during his upcoming Prediction 2026 event. There, he’ll reveal the key “green days” his system is flagging for 2026 – and how you can use them to anticipate major market moves before they happen. Make sure to reserve your spot here.

If you’ve ever wondered why some trades seem perfectly timed while others stall, Keith’s findings may change how you think about market timing altogether.

If you’re like millions of other Americans, you probably made a New Year’s resolution earlier this month.

Maybe to save more, cut down on calories, or spend more time in the gym.

If so, here’s an uncomfortable truth…

How long you stick to that resolution has less to do with discipline than timing.

You see, most people don’t abandon good intentions at random. They do it on a schedule.

That idea first caught the attention of a Wharton professor named Katy Milkman in the early 2010s. She wasn’t interested in motivational speeches or willpower. She focused on something narrower – and stranger. Not why people decide to change, but when.

What she found was remarkably consistent. Decisions to diet, exercise, save, or invest didn’t spread evenly across the year. They clustered tightly around a handful of dates: Mondays, the first day of the month, birthdays, and – above all – January 1.

To test the pattern, Milkman and her colleagues looked at gym check-ins, Google searches, and enrollment records for self-improvement courses.

Right after these so-called “fresh start” dates, effort surged. Diets began. Savings plans were opened. Gym attendance spiked.

Then, just as reliably, it faded.

The insight wasn’t that people lack willpower. It was that human behavior runs on a calendar. Motivation rises and falls on a schedule, whether we notice it or not.

Once you see that, an even more interesting question follows: If individual decisions surge and retreat at predictable moments, what happens when millions of people make those shifts at once?

ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½s, after all, are nothing more than the sum of those decisions.

It’s a question my team and I at TradeSmith set out to answer in 2024 with the help of thousands of lines of computer code and quintillions (billions of billions!) of market data points.

Stock ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ Seasonality: A Calendar-Based Approach

If you don’t know us already, TradeSmith is the creator of a leading financial technology platform, based in Baltimore, Md.

Today, we help more than 134,000 people around the world monitor more than $29 billion in assets. And Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist have profiled our breakthroughs.

We’ve built tools to help everyday investors track portfolios, manage risk, and spot opportunities. We’ve even created, tested, and released a popular AI-trading model.

We were confident we’d find some seasonality patterns in how stocks trade. But what we discovered surprised even us.

It turns out that thousands of stocks showed historically reliable windows – specific times of the year when they tended to rise, and others when they tended to stall or fall.

We call them “green days.”

And based on these green days, we built a trading system designed to act on them – pinpointing bullish seasonal windows on roughly 5,000 stocks, down to the day. In backtests, those trades succeeded with an 83% historical accuracy rate.

You can try out our software on the stocks you own by registering for a free, limited-time trial version here. We’re making it available ahead of our Prediction 2026 event, all about the seasonal patterns you need to be aware of as we kick off the year.

First, it helps to understand that seasonality isn’t some new invention. It’s shaped markets for a long time.

Seasonality Isn’t New – It’s Just Measurable Now

Commodity traders have always tracked planting and harvest cycles. Energy markets move with heating and cooling demand. Gold has long shown seasonal strength tied to jewelry demand and annual buying patterns in India and China.

Stock investors, too, have noticed calendar effects.

The January Effect. Quarter-end rebalancing. Even the old saying “Sell in May and go away.”

What’s changed isn’t that seasonality suddenly appeared. It’s that we can now measure it precisely – across individual stocks, over decades of data, and down to specific days.

Take Target (TGT).

For all the volatility surrounding the retailer in recent years, one pattern has held with striking consistency. Between June 22 and July 21, Target stock has risen an average of 5.2%, climbing 100% of the time over the past 15 years.

That pattern held again in 2025, when the stock gained 10.3% during its seasonal window – long after pandemic-era distortions faded.

Home Depot (HD) shows a similar rhythm.

Between June 15 and July 27, the stock has risen 93% of the time over the past 15 years, with an average gain of 4.7%. In 2025, it followed the same script, rising 6.7% in just over a month.

These aren’t one-off coincidences. They’re examples of a broader phenomenon that only becomes visible when you analyze markets through the lens of timing rather than narrative.

Using our Seasonality tool, we’ve tested this approach across thousands of stocks, indexes like the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, and even currencies and commodities.

Over an 18-year backtest, seasonal trades generated 857% total growth – more than double the S&P’s return over the same period.

Even in 2007, the weakest year in the test, the strategy produced a positive return, with gains of more than double the S&P 500 over the same time.

Circle These Key Dates for 2026 Seasonality Trades

That’s why we’ve made a version of our Seasonality software available for you to explore now.

We’ve unlocked access so you can see the seasonal “green days” for thousands of stocks yourself ahead of our Prediction 2026 event.

It kicks off Tuesday, January 20, at 10 a.m. Eastern. And I hope you’ll join me. I’ll be getting into more detail about the fast-approaching seasonality patterns you need to be aware of.

I’ll also walk you through how we uncovered these patterns, why they persist even in chaotic markets, and how you can use them to guide real-world trading decisions.

Knowing when the windows are opening and closing likely matters more to your wealth than any single resolution you’ve made.

The first date you’ll want to circle on your calendar is January 28. If seasonality patterns hold this year, it could open up the most lucrative trading opportunity in decades.

I hope you’ll join us.

The post The Simple Timing Pattern That’s Beating the ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ appeared first on InvestorPlace.

It’s true that the future is inherently unknowable, but that doesn’t mean the past can’t serve as a time-honored teacher.

This fact becomes especially relevant every January when I conceive my outlook for the year ahead.

Last year serves as a textbook example. In 2025, the markets were shaken by a long list of factors, notably the spring “Liberation Day” and tumultuous trade war…

Which caused the S&P 500 to plunge 6%, the Nasdaq Composite to drop 5.8%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average to plummet 2,231 points in early April – the worst selloff since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

But then there were also the leaps made in tech and AI, and thanks to these, among other factors, the indices ended the year up 16%, 20%, and 13%, respectively.

In short, we are entering 2026 with the knowledge that anything can happen… but I believe there are ample ways to prepare.

So, in today’s Smart Money, I’m sharing:

• Two of my predictions for the New Year,
• The types of stocks that can protect your portfolio in uncertain times,
• And how to get my full-year outlook.

Let’s jump in…

Forecast No. 1: The Magnificent Seven Stocks Will Lose Ground

One year ago, I had a cautious outlook for the Mag 7 stocks and thought they would underperform the S&P 500 Index. This rested on two factors: valuation gravity and the rising cost of artificial intelligence leadership.

Nevertheless, the Mag 7 were still expanding margins, generating robust free cash flow, and dazzling investors with their AI dominance and grand ambitions.

Since then, the storyline has not changed significantly, but it has aged and shifted into a new phase.

The combined net cash position of Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), Apple Inc. (AAPL), Meta Platforms Inc. (META), and Alphabet Inc. (GOOG) has collapsed from roughly $300 billion in 2017 to less than zero today.

On top of that, the five leading “hyperscaler” data center operators – Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, and Oracle Corp. (ORCL) – have invested an astounding $1.5 trillion during the last five years in research and development, plus property, plant, and equipment (i.e., data centers). And the pace of spending is only increasing.

In other words, the cost of creating competitive AI infrastructure is massive and rising, while the ultimate payoff is becoming less certain and immediate.

To be sure, the Mag 7 companies remain dominant, but their valuations amply reflect that dominance.

In 2026, the most crowded trade in the market does not need a collapse, a recession, or a crisis to lose money. It merely needs valuations to adjust to a world where the Mag 7 stocks do not produce robust cash flow and fat profit margins as reliably as they did in the past.

That world has arrived.

Forecast No. 2: The S&P 500 Will Downshift

My second forecast for 2026 dovetails with the first one. The S&P 500 will not deliver a fourth straight year of double-digit total returns. Breaking a three-year streak of double-digit returns does not require a bear market.

It only requires that the largest stocks stop carrying the rest. If the Mag 7 delivers a flat or losing year — as Forecast No. 1 suggests — the S&P 500 is likely to follow suit.

Fortunately, a subpar year for the S&P 500 would not automatically poison the entire investment landscape. Sometimes, when stock market darlings falter, overlooked stocks begin to shine. In other words, capital rotates.

From 2000 through 2004, for example, the S&P 500 fell more than 45% peak-to-trough. Yet, during that same period, sectors like energy, insurance, base metals, and precious metals generated double- or triple-digit gains.

I’m expecting a similar scenario to begin unfolding in 2026.

Now that I’ve shared a few of my forecasts, let’s take a look at how to invest accordingly…

How to Invest in 2026

To repeat myself, the future is unknowable, and I share my forecasts for 2026 with that caveat in mind.

However, as Mag 7 and other Big Tech companies continue to finance expensive developments in AI, they create a risky investment for those playing the market, especially given the power and influence these stocks hold.

So, don’t invite more risk to your portfolio this year. Focus on reward, instead.

Before you invest a dime in another overhyped AI stock, I want to tell you about the stocks I call “AI Survivors.”

Now, I fully admit that AI Survivors won’t change the world like AI promises to do, but they could change your financial future dramatically. That’s because these are stocks that have proven, successful business models and deliver actual earnings – not promises.

They also have human-centric values – not algorithms.

In short, AI Survivors are “future-proof” companies, or enterprises that produce physical products or services immune to AI’s destructive power. For example, agriculture or energy companies.

Similarly, companies that produce natural resource products like copper, aluminum, or timber should be able to survive the growth of AI technologies… at least for a long time.

Our Fry’s Investment Report portfolio is loaded with a variety of these stocks, helping and protecting investors from AI’s disruption, which is only becoming more powerful.

If you’re interested in learning more about the potential for tremendous gains in these stocks this year and the specific sectors to follow, click here.

And to access my additional 2026 forecasts, learn how to join Fry’s Investment Report today.

Regards,

Eric Fry

The post My #1 2026 Call: The Mag 7 Trade Breaks appeared first on InvestorPlace.

In the pre-dawn light along the Maine coast, the work begins quietly. But the stakes couldn’t be louder. More than $700 million rides on what happens next.

That’s why entire communities started their work so early.

As dawn emerges, lobster boats slip out of the harbor, decks stacked with traps, crews moving with quiet urgency. They start this early because timing matters — miss the window, and the opportunity disappears.

Credit: Kirkikis

The lobster fishery anchoring these communities accounted for over $700 million in landings in 2024, with the lobster catch alone worth more than $528 million at the docks — making it the most valuable marine fishery in the nation and supporting thousands of livelihoods up and down the coast.

These fishermen aren’t chasing rumors or guessing where the catch might be – the stakes are too high.

They’re following something far more reliable: the seasonal migration of lobsters, driven by water temperature and instinct older than the boats themselves.

Every spring, as coastal waters warm, lobsters migrate inshore into shallower depths. And every spring, the docks come alive. Traps are set weeks in advance. Processing plants hire extra hands. Fuel suppliers, bait shops, and wholesalers ramp up in anticipation.

Entire coastal towns surge into motion – not because anyone hopes lobsters will arrive, but because they know they will. The rhythm is so dependable that ignoring it would be economic suicide.

No seasoned lobster fisherman would keep setting traps in deep winter waters and blame bad luck when the catch comes up empty.

They understand a simple truth: success isn’t about effort alone—it’s about timing. And those who respect seasonal patterns, understood after generations of effort, don’t just survive year after year… they thrive.

Today, Investors Don’t Have to Wait Decades to Uncover Powerful Seasonal Patterns

We have data. We have computing power. And we can detect cycles that once went unnoticed.

Our corporate partners at TradeSmith are on a mission to give everyday investors access to the kinds of data and analytics once reserved for hedge funds. Their work has uncovered a feature of the stock market most investors overlook: seasonality at the individual stock level.

You can’t see these cycles with the naked eye. They only show up after you run decades of data through powerful algorithms.

What emerges from decades of data is striking: thousands of stocks show historically reliable windows – specific times of year when they tend to rise, and others when they tend to fall – regardless of bull markets, bear markets, wars, pandemics, or panics.

In their latest innovation, TradeSmith has created a rapid-fire trading strategy based on these signals that can pinpoint bullish seasonality windows on 5,000 stocks – to the day. In their backtests, the system’s trades have succeeded with 83% accuracy.

You can try it yourself right now to see the “green day” for 5,000 different stocks when you register for their Prediction 2026 event, which airs next Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2025, at 10 a.m. Eastern.

Reading the Seasonality Chart

Magnificent 7 stock Apple (AAPL) can provide us with an example of how TradeSmith has made it incredibly easy to read the cycles.

Apple, of course, is a trillion-dollar maker of computers, phones, software, apps, and other consumer devices. Despite the stock’s fluctuations over the years, Apple has seen an average increase of 6.57% between June 26 and July 21, rising 100% of the time over the past 15 years.

You can see the “green zone” pattern below.

That’s how you fish for winning trades.

The data compiled over the years is telling us the best time to buy Apple stock, and the best time to sell it, too.

The chart you’re seeing above is from one of the breakthrough innovations from TradeSmith’s team of researchers, software engineers, and quant investors: their ground-breaking Trade Cycles Seasonality tool.

The development team has fine-tuned this tool to identify seasonality cycles in stocks, stock market indexes such as the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, as well as in currencies and commodities.

By crunching the data and compiling the historical movements of thousands of different assets, the TradeSmith team runs 50,000 tests daily to analyze every stock in the major indexes. This enables TradeSmith to build a powerful system that helps predict the biggest jumps in 5,000 stocks.

Over an 18-year backtest, these seasonal trades generated a total growth of 857%. That’s more than twice what the S&P 500 delivered over the same time.

The Power of Seasonality Is Now in Your Hands

The best part is, you can sample this start today … right now.

Go here to register for access to an “unlocked” version of TradeSmith’s groundbreaking Seasonality tool. Think of it as a free sample of one of the most powerful investing tools available.

You can explore the results of TradeSmith’s research for the stocks you own or for the stocks on your watch list. It’s available online until Monday, Jan. 19.

Then on Tuesday, Jan. 20, at 10 a.m. Eastern during the Prediction 2026 webinar, you’ll get a live demonstration of how the Seasonality tool can help you find the best time to buy and sell a stock – down to the day.

Go here now to register for the event – and give TradeSmith’s Seasonality tool a try, free of charge, before the big event.

You don’t have to be like the lobstermen of Maine and wait generations to know the patterns that lead to profit. You can utilize data and high-powered computing to gain the edge typically reserved for professionals.

Enjoy your weekend,

Luis Hernandez

Editor in Chief, InvestorPlace

The post Here are the Best Times to Buy and Sell Stocks appeared first on InvestorPlace.

For as long as I’ve been coming to you live with Masters in Trading, there’s one thing most people constantly get wrong about me.

Most people assume my work is aimed solely at individual traders.

Now, don’t get me wrong. That claim is half true.

Over the last decade alone, I’ve trained more than 100 professional traders and helped thousands of folks learn to trade options like pros with Masters in Trading.

And among those people I’ve helped are every kind of trader you can imagine – from total newbies to pro-level stock traders looking for an edge.

But you shouldn’t be surprised to learn that a meaningful number of the people I train are already professionals. In fact, many of them are financial advisors simply looking for an edge. So why do they come to me?

It’s simple. Think of the typical work a financial advisor does for their client.

A good financial advisor will find long-term investments where clients can feel safe parking their hard-earned cash. They discover ways for their clients to diversify their holdings and while reducing their exposure to risk.

Conservative. Reliable. Nothing left up to chance. Does that sound familiar?

As an InvestorPlace analyst, my focus is the same. I show you how to manage risk, volatility, and decision-making when markets don’t cooperate. I just do it with options.

It doesn’t matter who you are.Everyone needs that kind of intel from the freshest newbie to the most seasoned traders out there.

I don’t treat what I do as so different from professional planners. The biggest difference simply comes down to how we go about growing our clients’ money.

And here’s one thing that holds true for nearly every financial advisor I’ve ever met.

Options trading is a total no-fly zone. They all tend to feed me the same few lines…

It’s far too risky.

Options just don’t provide the stability my clients are looking for.

I’m afraid I’ll blow up my client’s capital with a single misplace options bet.

Look, I get it. These are real concerns for any investor – especially if you don’t know much about options trading in the first place.

That knowledge gap is where most financial advisors fall short. After all, you don’t learn how to become a master options trader in a Series 7.

That’s why financial advisors come to me in the first place. They’re looking for an edge in a profession that often leans too hard into a conservative investing methodology.

Now, I’ve talked to many advisors over the years – but one advisor I met a few years ago set me on a whole course that influenced the way I approach Masters in Trading.

Allow me to explain…

“I Was Frustrated With What I Was Being Taught”

A few years ago, I interviewed a financial advisor named Georgia. She’d been a financial advisor for many years, spending years inside a major wirehouse before going independent.

Like many advisors, she was trained to follow a formula — approved research, approved products, approved narratives. A conservative methodology that yielded conservative results.

On paper, it looked responsible. But in practice, it often fell short.

“I was frustrated with the information I was paying for and hearing,” she told me. “It wasn’t always the most profitable or useful for my clients.”

The issue wasn’t effort or intelligence. Georgia was more than capable of safely growing her clients’ money.

It all came down to how advisors are trained to think about markets in the first place.

So Georgia went independent. And that’s when she started looking for education that went beyond licensing exams, sales scripts, and long-term generalities.

That search eventually led her to join Masters in Trading. Before joining, she’d been warned by countless colleagues to avoid options trading.

She’d been told it wasn’t a meaningful way to make her clients money. And the risks? Too great to potentially tank her career over.

She’d been told repeatedly: don’t touch options, outsource them. You don’t need to understand the market.

In Georgia’s case, she wasn’t just trying to turn a quick buck in the options market. It was all about setting her clients up for success in the long term.

Georgia works with retirees and clients taking distributions now — not 20 years from now.

“I can’t just say ‘wait it out.’ That doesn’t work.” She was at an impasse, uncertain how to marry her conservative investing ethos with the more volatile world of options trading.

I understood her concerns. The framework I’ve built here offers something very different from the conventional wisdom behind financial planning. But in many ways, it delivers the exact same result.

So when I sat down with Georgia, I made one thing very clear… Trading options isn’t so different from parking your money in mutual funds or REITs.

The goal is always the same. Maximize your profit potential on every position you take.

That’s precisely what I teach every day I go live with Masters in Trading. My goal with Georgia was to show her that our goals were one and the same – even if the approach was different.

I want everyone reading this to have access to the same tools and insights I handed to Georgia. That’s why I put together The Masters in Trading Options Challenge.

The Challenge is where we take everything you’ve learned in my daily LIVEs — fixed risk, thesis-driven exits, laddered entries, defined-duration trades, and emotional discipline — and put it into practice in a structured, step-by-step environment.

For two weeks, we walk through the foundations of real options trading the way I learned them on the trading floor. You’ll learn exactly how I think, exactly how I build trades, and exactly how I manage both the winners and the losers.

You can click here to check out what the Masters in Trading Options Challenge has in store for you.

Now, let’s get back to Georgia’s story.

I knew I had to find a way to convince her of the power of options trading in isolation. That meant I had reach deep down and expose my own successes and failures in the options market.

We got into some of my early experience during our initial chat.

But eventually, I knew I had to get brutally honest with Georgia about how my unique background shaped my entire approach to options trading.

How I Learned the “Hard Way”

I have a confession to make…

For many years, I didn’t understand the first thing about trading options.

When I first started trading options on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) in my early 20s, I used to beat myself up over every trade I missed. I’d chase, overthink, and tell myself, “This one had to work.”

So much of my first year was about learning from one mistake after another. Often with thousands more on the line than I’d ever be willing to risk today.

My first year trading? I was that trader making all the wrong moves. And I didn’t truly understand how options were any less risky than flushing your money down the toilet.

No significant returns. Just frustration. Always wondering what I was doing wrong.

But all those losses during my first year weren’t in vain.

I was surrounded by so many older and wiser traders who helped me see the errors in my approach.

They helped me realize that professional options traders don’t lead with their gut. That was my first major lesson.

Any trader can catch a lucky break here and there. But on the floor you can’t survive on luck and gut instinct alone.

I know what some of you are probably thinking right now. “What was the tipping point for you? What finally clicked after months of bad trades?”

What It Really Takes to Succeed in Options

Without a doubt, process, conviction, and discipline are the rules of the game. These are the core principles all traders must fall back on. And only hard-won knowledge got me to understand the importance of each principle.

When I say process, it isn’t a gut feeling we get from some squiggly lines on a chart. We’re on the hunt for objective reasons why we should get into a trade.

It could be anything. Unusual options activity (UOA) sends a handful of stocks soaring in the near term.

Two mispriced but correlated assets like gold and silver start moving away from each other.

Maybe government-sparked volatility sends a group of mining or defense stocks higher.

We’ve had success with special situations like these, whether with KTOS and combat drones, QXO consolidating the retail building supply space, and mispriced stocks like BMNR with large Ethereum holdings.

Trades like these are based on a clear process. We’re finding opportunities in the market driven by real dynamics pushing and pulling assets around.

Now, even the most thorough process doesn’t spare you from the ups and downs of the market. After all, nothing moves up or down in straight lines.

A trade can look perfect on paper and not go the way you expected. And that’s where conviction steps in.

Conviction simply comes down to doing your research and preparing for any outcome in a given trade. That’s actually the beauty of trading options. We have the power to express our opinion on a stock rather than just betting on one direction.

Unlike stocks, options allow you to express a range of opinions about a stock’s future. Will it rise? Fall? Stay flat? With options, you can craft strategies to profit no matter the scenario. And you can always do so with conviction that a trade can go your way with the right research and risk management strategy.

It’s always great when a trade goes your way. But when it doesn’t, maintaining discipline becomes our lifeline. It’s all about setting the rules of the trade before you even put in your first offer. This is the biggest trap for investors.

They rely too heavily on technical analysis. They let excitement push them into chasing hot trades and oversized bets. They micromanage their portfolios within an inch of success – only to squander it all with a badly timed exit.

Strong process and conviction help you stay in the game. But without discipline, you’re breaking all the rules you’ve set for yourself.

Of course, it’s not enough to just have process, conviction, and discipline. You’ve got to pair that knowledge with a deeper understanding of the odds you’re facing.

And that’s where the most important part of my approach – exactly what Georgia came to Masters in Trading to understand – becomes clear.

How We Keep the Odds in Our Favor

You see, those years building a singular approach clued me into one lesson that completely changed how I trade:

Probabilistic thinking.

It’s all about knowing that every trade has a probability. You can’t know the result – only the odds.

I know that sounds obvious to most. And in many ways, it is. But in trading, so much of what we do is ruled by that “it’s gotta work” mentality.

Probabilistic thinking changes the game for us.

You always come in knowing the real underlying value of a trade doesn’t exist in isolation. Assets only have value in relation to each other.

The odds come from understanding the underlying dynamics between assets – whether it’s two correlated assets moving apart in price or key supply shocks moving entire sectors around.

The perfect example of all this knowledge at play? Just consider the commodities market over the last year.

While volatility sent equities in every direction, commodities became some of our most consistent earners here at Masters in Trading. And the setup for us was key.

Over the last year, the gold-silver ratio has flashed multiple warning signals that primed the pump for a rally in industrial metals.

For decades, these two metals have typically moved together.

But over the last year, silver started breaking away from gold in a big way – and that price action set up a whole series of winning trades for the Masters in Trading community.

Of course, those profits didn’t just come from pure gold or silver plays. It’s all in the metals the markets typically don’t pay much attention to.

Thirty-plus year relationships between metals like platinum and copper were breaking down and going absolutely parabolic.

Spreads always go back and forth – but it’s not a good sign when they go parabolic like we saw throughout 2025. At the same time, the dynamics behind this shift were clear.

Everyone was rushing to safe-haven assets like gold as the ultimate hedge against volatility.

And once gold got overloaded and oversold,the opportunity in cheaper metals like copper became too good to pass up.

Here, we had a clear setup based on deep research. Our process at work.

And we could see the odds were favoring a whole surge in industrial metals the markets were mispricing. Pure probabilistic setup that steered us away from overcrowded metals like gold to something less obvious.

All that’s to say… We did very well trading the price dynamic between metals like gold and silver throughout 2025 without gaining pure, direct exposure to either asset.

Our multiple doubles and triples in stocks like Freeport McMoran (FCX) and Pan American Silver (PAAS) prove that.

It’s the same story with assets like copper, lithium, platinum, palladium, and more.

One of our biggest all-time trades in the history of Masters in Trading? It was a single lithium name, Albemarle (ALB), that netted us more than 1,000% in total gains over the course of just six months — including maxing out our January $25 bull call spread for a spectacular491% return on Friday.

Those trades show just how effective putting a consistent strategy to work can be.

When you understand the key relationships between any related assets, you can spot opportunities others miss.

After our chat, I showed Georgia the exact same track record I’m sharing with you right now. Those gains? That’s when it all clicked for her.

And that’s when she truly started to understand the power of options trading.

Once you let go of all that common sense thinking and the emotional attachment to a trade, everything changes.

Suddenly, every trade becomes just another data point for us. It’s no longer love or hate, but binary.

That’s what a real options trader worth their salt does. They make bets where the odds are in their favor. And they always follow a plan based on conviction, process, and discipline.

Our Masters in Trading playbook is about finding those opportunities that tick all the boxes. And our strategy is designed to work in any market environment.

Remember when tariffs wreaked havoc earlier this year? That’s precisely when we pivoted toward commodities like precious metals, lithium, and ETFs .

When government-sparked volatility boosted miners and defense stocks? We swooped in with trades on all-timers like MP Materials that represent some of the strongest gains in our portfolio this year.

Once I made the connection between all those principles years ago, everything changed for me.

And once I shared those insights with Georgia, it absolutely changed the game for her clients as well.

What Georgia Learned From Masters in Trading

Joining Masters in Trading and our little talk completely tipped the scales for Georgia.

She began to see options differently — not as leverage or speculation, but as tools for managing risk and income.

Covered calls. Defined downside. Fewer, more intentional trades that have a higher chance of landing profits.

The first few months weren’t easy — and that’s important to say.

Georgia wasn’t just learning something new. She was unlearning years of conditioning.

Instead of worrying about what the market might do, the focus became simple:

Trade the market for what it’s doing right now — not what you think it should do.

That mindset applies just as much to advising as it does to trading. Fewer positions. More patience. Always aware of the risk you’re managing.

When I got back to her several months after our initial chat, she’d already begun working the options market for her clients. The results?

“I don’t have big gap-down days anymore,” she said. “It’s a more consistent way to manage accounts.”

That shift alone changed how she approached client portfolios. And one of the biggest changes had nothing to do with charts.

“I get fewer phone calls now,” Georgia told me. Not because clients were disengaged — but because they finally understood what was happening in their accounts.

Instead of reacting emotionally, she began explaining positions through relative value and simple analogies — like buying a house in the right neighborhood at the right price.

“That’s where I started adding real value,” she said.

I’m not sharing this to sell you anything.

I’m sharing Georgia’s story because it highlights something most people don’t realize about my work — and why it looks different from typical market commentary.

It isn’t about predictions. It isn’t about trading more. And it definitely isn’t about being right all the time.

It’s about thinking clearly during times of uncertainty — and having a framework you can rely on when markets get noisy.

That’s why financial advisors quietly come here. That’s why they stay. And that’s why this approach has remained consistent over the years.

For InvestorPlace readers who want to see this framework applied step-by-step, the Masters in Trading Challenge is the most straightforward place to start.

It’s not a signal service. It’s not a prediction engine.

It’s simply an introduction to how I think about markets, risk, and decision-making.

And if you’d like to hear Georgia tell her story directly, you can watch the full video below…

Remember, the creative trader wins,

Jonathan Rose,

Founder, Masters in Trading

The post Why Financial Advisors Quietly Come to Me to Learn Options appeared first on InvestorPlace.

Today, Keith Kaplan takes that idea a step further by explaining why these patterns exist in the first place.

As it turns out, human behavior itself follows a calendar. Our decisions – from saving and spending to buying and selling – tend to cluster around specific moments in time, especially at the start of a new year.

Keith explains how those behavioral rhythms show up in the stock market… and how his team at TradeSmith has learned to measure and act on them using decades of data.

He’ll also be walking through these patterns in more detail during his upcoming presentation, Prediction 2026, which goes live Tuesday, January 20, 2026, at 10 a.m. Eastern. You can register for that event here.

Below, Keith explains why New Year’s resolutions may have more to do with market trends than you’d expect…

*

If you’re like millions of other Americans, you probably made a New Year’s resolution recently.

Maybe to save more, cut down on calories, or spend more time in the gym.

If so, here’s an uncomfortable truth…

How long you stick to that resolution has less to do with discipline than timing.

You see, most people don’t abandon good intentions at random. They do it on a schedule.

That idea first caught the attention of a Wharton professor named Katy Milkman in the early 2010s. She wasn’t interested in motivational speeches or willpower. She focused on something narrower – and stranger. Not why people decide to change, but when.

What she found was remarkably consistent. Decisions to diet, exercise, save, or invest didn’t spread evenly across the year. They clustered tightly around a handful of dates: Mondays, the first day of the month, birthdays, and – above all – January 1.

To test the pattern, Milkman and her colleagues looked at gym check-ins, Google searches, and enrollment records for self-improvement courses.

Right after these so-called “fresh start” dates, effort surged. Diets began. Savings plans were opened. Gym attendance spiked.

Then, just as reliably, it faded.

The insight wasn’t that people lack willpower. It was that human behavior runs on a calendar. Motivation rises and falls on a schedule, whether we notice it or not.

Once you see that, an even more interesting question follows: If individual decisions surge and retreat at predictable moments, what happens when millions of people make those shifts at once?

ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½s, after all, are nothing more than the sum of those decisions.

It’s a question my team and I at TradeSmith set out to answer in 2024 with the help of thousands of lines of computer code and quintillions (billions of billions!) of market data points.

Closing the Gap With Wall Street Elites

If you don’t know us already, TradeSmith is the creator of a leading financial technology platform, based in Baltimore, Maryland.

Today, we help more than 134,000 people around the world monitor more than $29 billion in assets. And Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist have profiled our breakthroughs.

We’ve built tools to help everyday investors track portfolios, manage risk, and spot opportunities. We’ve even created, tested, and released a popular AI-trading model.

We were confident we’d find some seasonality patterns in how stocks trade. But what we discovered surprised even us.

It turns out that thousands of stocks showed historically reliable windows – specific times of the year when they tended to rise, and others when they tended to stall or fall.

We call them “green days.”

And based on these green days, we built a trading system designed to act on them – pinpointing bullish seasonal windows on roughly 5,000 stocks, down to the day. In backtests, those trades succeeded with an 83% historical accuracy rate.

You can try out our software on the stocks you own by registering for a free, limited-time trial version here. We’re making it available ahead of our Prediction 2026 event, all about the seasonal patterns you need to be aware of as we kick off the year.

First, it helps to understand that seasonality isn’t some new invention. It’s shaped markets for a long time.

Traders Have Always Tracked Cycles

Commodity traders have always tracked planting and harvest cycles. Energy markets move with heating and cooling demand. Gold has long shown seasonal strength tied to jewelry demand and annual buying patterns in India and China.

Stock investors, too, have noticed calendar effects.

The January Effect. Quarter-end rebalancing. Even the old saying “Sell in May and go away.”

What’s changed isn’t that seasonality suddenly appeared. It’s that we can now measure it precisely – across individual stocks, over decades of data, and down to specific days.

Take Target (TGT).

For all the volatility surrounding the retailer in recent years, one pattern has held with striking consistency. Between June 22 and July 21, Target stock has risen an average of 5.2%, climbing 100% of the time over the past 15 years.

That pattern held again in 2025, when the stock gained 10.3% during its seasonal window – long after pandemic-era distortions faded.

Home Depot (HD) shows a similar rhythm.

Between June 15 and July 27, the stock has risen 93% of the time over the past 15 years, with an average gain of 4.7%. In 2025, it followed the same script, rising 6.7% in just over a month.

These aren’t one-off coincidences. They’re examples of a broader phenomenon that only becomes visible when you analyze markets through the lens of timing rather than narrative.

Using our Seasonality tool, we’ve tested this approach across thousands of stocks, indexes like the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, and even currencies and commodities.

Over an 18-year backtest, seasonal trades generated 857% total growth – more than double the S&P 500’s return over the same period.

Even in 2007, the weakest year in the test, the strategy produced a positive return, with gains of more than double the S&P 500 over the same time.

Circle These Dates on Your Calendar

That’s why we’ve made a version of our Seasonality software available for you to explore now.

We’ve unlocked access so you can see the seasonal “green days” for thousands of stocks yourself ahead of our Prediction 2026 event.

It kicks off Tuesday, January 20, at 10 a.m. Eastern. And I hope you’ll join me. I’ll be getting into more detail about the fast-approaching seasonality patterns you need to be aware of.

I’ll also walk you through how we uncovered these patterns, why they persist even in chaotic markets, and how you can use them to guide real-world trading decisions.

Knowing when the windows are opening and closing likely matters more to your wealth than any single resolution you’ve made.

The first date you’ll want to circle on your calendar is Jan. 28. If seasonality patterns hold this year, it could open up the most lucrative trading opportunity in decades.

I hope you’ll join us.

Keith Kaplan

CEO, TradeSmith

The post How Human Behavior Shapes ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ Timing appeared first on InvestorPlace.

Which is why the setup for space AI stocks in 2026 is starting to look less like a speculative fever dream and more like a classic convergence trade: where policy tailwinds + new infrastructure narrative + a generational capital-markets catalyst combine to send space stocks into orbit.

And there are three catalysts that matter most:

Put those together, and you get a rare and bullish setup: a theme that has government urgency, private capital ambition, and public-market oxygen all at the same time.

Let’s break it down.

Catalyst 1: The ‘Space Superiority’ Executive Order and the Shift to Commercial-First Contracting

The new White House EO signed in mid-December, titled “Ensuring American Space Superiority,” is straightforward with its goals:

• Crewed U.S. Moon landing by 2028
• Progress toward a more sustained lunar presence (with outpost elements around 2030)
• Commercial pathway to replace the ISS by 2030
• Faster procurement and a harder push toward “commercial-first” contracting
• A stronger “space security” posture and missile-defense demonstrations
• A long-term signal: space-based nuclear power 

And the most investable part of the EO is the mechanisms it’s setting forth, basically telling agencies: “Buy faster. Buy commercial. Stop overpaying for slowness.”

This is important because the fastest way to create winners is to change how contracts are awarded. When Washington shifts from cost-plus, bespoke contracting to commercial-first, fixed-price models, a different set of companies starts to win – and the public-market space sector becomes far more investable. 

The timeline is also set (and markets love deadlines).

With the EO signed December 18, 2025, the countdown has already begun:

• ~60 days: nuclear initiative guidance
• ~90 days: integrated plan package to the president (including program ‘health checks’)
• ~120 days: transportation policy revisions and spectrum actions
• ~180 days: implementation of acquisition reforms and national security space strategy/architecture plan 

Throughout early-to-mid 2026, we can expect recurring progress updates that act as stock catalysts: policy memos, implementation plans, procurement tweaks, pilot programs, and (importantly) contract momentum.

This is how the stocks start moving before the fundamentals show up in quarterly revenue.

Catalyst 2: Space AI and ‘Orbital Data Centers’ – The Next Frontier for AI Infrastructure

Let’s address the elephant in the room: data centers in space sound absurd. And they are – until the first demos show up. Then markets do what they do – sprint 18 months ahead of reality and price in a world that doesn’t yet exist.

We are witnessing the birth of Space AI, the next multi-trillion dollar hardware supercycle. The ‘AI Power Wall’ on Earth is forcing hyperscalers to look toward orbital data centers for inference and radiation-hardened edge computing.

• Nvidia (NVDA) has publicly profiled startups pursuing space-based data centers, explicitly framing the pitch as lower energy constraints relative to Earth-based infrastructure and highlighting the engineering effort around thermal/power systems. 
• Starcloud‘s own materials describe an in-space GPU cluster concept and a first commercial satellite (Starcloud-2), aiming for operational status in 2026. 
• Elon Musk has talked about using his SpaceX company to provide data centers in space for his AI company, xAI, and has loudly proclaimed that orbital computing is the future. 
• Alphabet (GOOGL) is teaming up with Planet Labs (PL) in what they call “Project Suncatcher,” which involves launching space-based Google AI data centers by 2027.

Now, will orbital compute replace terrestrial hyperscale in 2026? Of course not. But if ‘compute in orbit’ becomes a credible narrative, the market immediately starts bidding up the enabling stack: launch networks, space-grade power and thermal management, radiation-tolerant electronics and resilient systems, optical links/laser comms, in-orbit servicing and in-space manufacturing.

The recent EO also addresses exactly the areas that become relevant as space becomes more commercial and more crowded – space traffic management, orbital debris, cislunar operations, spectrum leadership, and commercial “as-a-service” approaches. 

Orbital compute doesn’t need to work at scale to move stocks in 2026. It simply needs to be credible enough to ignite investment, partnerships, prototypes, and pilot program procurement.

Because Wall Street buys optionality – and overpays for it.

Catalyst 3: The 2026 SpaceX IPO and the ‘SpaceX Adjacency’ Trade

Now, here’s the big one.

If SpaceX goes public in 2026 (via traditional IPO or a creative structure), it would likely become the benchmark asset for the entire space category. In terms of mindshare, it’s the Tesla of space; and markets love a narrative anchor.

SpaceX is discussing a 2026 IPO that could raise $25 billion-plus and value the company above $1 trillion, with timing discussed around mid-year. For investors, the primary goal of this event is identifying the “SpaceX adjacency” stocks – companies like Rocket Lab (RKLB) and Redwire (RDW) that will benefit most from this massive valuation re-rating.

A SpaceX IPO doesn’t just create a new stock. It:

And there are already public-market ‘SpaceX adjacency’ theories floating around – everything from suppliers to more exotic routes – because markets hate waiting. 

The hype is building quickly.

Why 2026 Could Be the Space Stocks Re-Rating Year

Individually, each catalyst is meaningful. Together, they’re combustible.

The EO generates government urgency, contract velocity, and a national narrative. Orbital compute creates the next ‘AI infrastructure’ storyline, with a fresh frontier. The potential SpaceX IPO inspires liquidity, benchmarking, attention, and multiple expansion.

This is the same recipe that has driven so many prior theme cycles:

Then everything in the ecosystem trades like it’s a pure-play winner.

Of course, sometimes that ends badly – like in 2021, when Virgin Galactic (SPCE) crashed from $1,100 to $267 as reality replaced hype. But in 2026, we’ve got one additional ingredient that matters: the AI boom is still the dominant macro narrative, and orbital compute is basically AI infrastructure with a spacesuit. 

If you’re looking for a way to keep playing AI upside while everyone fights over the same data center trades… space is a natural new hunting ground.

Who Might Benefit: The Top 2026 Space Stock Plays

We’ve compiled a watchlist for where capital and contracts could flow as the three catalysts converge:

If orbital compute and lunar goals both accelerate, launch cadence becomes the bottleneck – and bottlenecks become profit pools.

Rocket Lab just landed an $805 million contract in December 2025 to deliver 18 missile warning and tracking satellites for the Space Development Agency – the company’s largest deal yet, nearly 50% larger than its entire 2024 revenue. The company has also been selected for the U.S. Air Force’s $46 billion EWAAC contract and the U.K.’s £1 billion hypersonic development framework, both running through 2031. Rocket Lab’s space systems business has grown from 6% of revenue in 2020 to nearly 75% today, with third-quarter 2025 space systems revenue alone hitting $114 million. The company’s evolution from pure launch provider to end-to-end space systems integrator positions it squarely in the “commercial-first” procurement wave the EO is pushing.

The EO explicitly leans into security strategy, architecture, and deterrence language – and that typically means primes/integrators get steady demand even when commercial cycles wobble.

Lockheed Martin (LMT), Northrop Grumman (NOC), RTX (RTX), L3Harris (LHX), and Leidos (LDOS) remain the core defense space plays. These companies build the satellites, sensors, and integration layers that the “space security” and missile-defense portions of the EO will require. While less volatile than pure-play space stocks, they offer exposure to multi-decade government spending cycles with lower execution risk.

A commercial pathway to replace the ISS by 2030 is a headline goal – and an early pipeline of contracts, partnerships, and prototypes can show up well before then.

Redwire was awarded a contract in September 2025 to provide roll-out solar arrays (ROSA) for Axiom Station’s first commercial space station module. Redwire has delivered eight IROSA wings for the ISS (six currently deployed), with each providing 20-plus kW of power for over 10 years. The company also secured a $25 million NASA IDIQ contract in August 2025 for biotechnology facilities and on-orbit operations, plus additional NASA contracts for pharmaceutical drug development in space using its PIL-BOX platform. Redwire’s positioning across power systems, in-space manufacturing, and microgravity research makes it a core infrastructure play for the post-ISS era.

EO language favoring fixed-price, as-a-service models is a tailwind for companies selling data products rather than bespoke hardware builds.

Planet Labs secured a $260M contract from Germany in July 2025 – one of its largest ever – for satellite services supporting European defense and security. The company also won a $7.5 million contract renewal with the U.S. Navy in October 2025 for vessel detection over the Pacific, plus a $12.8 million NGA contract for AI-enabled maritime domain awareness. Planet Labs’ contract backlog surged 245% year-over-year, driven by major defense and intelligence wins. The stock has responded accordingly, up over 267% year-to-date through Q4 2025.

BlackSky (BKSY) won a $100-plus million seven-year contract in January 2025 from an international defense partner for real-time monitoring capabilities, and added a $30-plus million multi-year international defense contract in Q3 for Gen-3 tactical ISR services. The company’s backlog stands at $322.7 million, with 91% from international contracts. BlackSky’s bet on high-cadence, AI-enabled analytics is paying off as governments prioritize real-time intelligence, though the company faces near-term headwinds from U.S. budget uncertainty.

Spire (SPIR) rounds out the Earth observation trio with its focus on weather data and maritime tracking, though it operates at a smaller scale and with less recent contract momentum compared to Planet Labs and BlackSky.

This is the speculative bucket. If ‘compute in orbit’ becomes investable, the first winners will be providers of enabling hardware – especially around power/thermal, radiation-hardened systems, and optical communications.

This is also where you’ll want to watch for ‘surprise’ beneficiaries as partnerships are announced. Companies providing space-grade components, cooling systems, and laser communication links could see sudden revaluations if orbital compute moves from concept to funded programs. The EO’s emphasis on space-based nuclear power is particularly relevant here – if that pathway opens up, it changes the economics of power-hungry orbital infrastructure entirely.

The Risks Space Investors Need to Watch

We’ve got to be honest about the hazards here:

• Execution risk and budget politics are real. Even Reuters coverage notes that NASA has been dealing with workforce reductions and budget pressure in the broader policy environment, and timelines can slip.
• Orbital compute faces serious challenges – radiation, cooling, latency, launch economics. The story can run ahead of the engineering.
• Space stocks are volatile by nature. They’re small-cap heavy, sentiment-driven, and allergic to risk-off macro tape.

These risks don’t necessarily prevent a 2026 rally. They just mean you should expect a trade that looks like this: rip higher on narrative, contracts, and valuation re-rating → correct violently when reality shines through.

The 2026 Playbook: What to Track

If you want to track whether this theme is viable in 2026, don’t just watch stock prices. Watch the signposts:

• Q1-Q2 2026: EO implementation documents (especially procurement reforms and security architecture plans)
• Throughout 2026: Orbital compute demos/partnerships (GPU-in-space, optical comms announcements, payload customers) 
• Mid-2026: SpaceX IPO newsflow (bank selection, timing, structure rumors, Starlink narrative, and whether orbital compute is part of the pitch) 
• Ongoing: Defense and civil space contract velocity (who’s winning, and whether “commercial-first” shifts the usual winners)

When those signals align, investors start reassessing their positioning.

The Bottom Line On Space Stocks In 2026

The ‘Space AI’ story is moving fast.

With Earth’s infrastructure hitting a “power wall,” the race to move AI compute off-planet is on. Investors are now betting on the only environment where AI can truly scale – powered by 24/7 solar energy and cooled by the infinite vacuum of space. And the companies providing the “eyes” and “brains” in orbit are the ones that will define the next decade of the AI boom.

This isn’t just a new location for tech; it’s the inevitable next phase of a familiar pattern.

Phones. Computers. The internet. AI.

Each technological leap moved faster than the last – and created fortunes for those who recognized the pattern early.

That’s why I just held a brand-new briefing about the next tech poised to follow that same exponential path – one small company at the center of a trillion-dollar industry that’s about to be disrupted from the inside.

See the name and ticker symbol of this top tech play before it takes off.

The post Space AI in 2026: Why Wall Street Is Betting on Orbital Data Centers appeared first on InvestorPlace.

That’s the core idea behind today’s Friday Digest takeover from TradeSmith CEO Keith Kaplan.

By analyzing decades of market data across thousands of stocks, Keith and his team of data specialists uncovered something surprising: highly reliable seasonal windows – specific periods when certain stocks tend to rise, while others stall or fall. Keith calls these moments “green days.”

These seasonal windows don’t rely on broad market clichés like “Sell in May.” They’re stock-specific patterns, identified down to the day, and tested across multiple market cycles. In long-term backtests, trades based on these seasonal windows dramatically outperformed the broader market – even holding up during historically difficult years.

In his piece below, Keith explains:

• Why seasonality has shaped markets for generations
• How modern data finally allows investors to measure it precisely
• Why knowing when to act may matter more than any single market forecast

He also shares why the next few weeks could be especially important, and why one late-January date may open the door to a particularly compelling opportunity. If you’re looking for a quantitative edge to the markets, today’s Digest is for you.

And be sure to mark your calendar for Keith’s Prediction 2026 event this coming Tuesday, January 20, at 10 a.m. Eastern, where he’ll dive deeper into these patterns and how to put them to work in your portfolio. You can register right here.

I’ll let Keith take it from here.

Have a good evening,
Jeff Remsburg

If you’re like millions of other Americans, you probably made a New Year’s resolution recently.

Maybe to save more, cut down on calories, or spend more time in the gym.

If so, here’s an uncomfortable truth…

How long you stick to that resolution has less to do with discipline than timing.

You see, most people don’t abandon good intentions at random. They do it on a schedule.

That idea first caught the attention of a Wharton professor named Katy

Milkman in the early 2010s. She wasn’t interested in motivational speeches or willpower. She focused on something narrower – and stranger. Not why people decide to change, but when.

What she found was remarkably consistent. Decisions to diet, exercise, save, or invest didn’t spread evenly across the year. They clustered tightly around a handful of dates: Mondays, the first day of the month, birthdays, and – above all – January 1.

To test the pattern, Milkman and her colleagues looked at gym check-ins, Google searches, and enrollment records for self-improvement courses.

Right after these so-called “fresh start” dates, effort surged. Diets began. Savings plans were opened. Gym attendance spiked.

Then, just as reliably, it faded.

The insight wasn’t that people lack willpower. It was that human behavior runs on a calendar. Motivation rises and falls on a schedule, whether we notice it or not.

Once you see that, an even more interesting question follows: If individual decisions surge and retreat at predictable moments, what happens when millions of people make those shifts at once?

ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½s, after all, are nothing more than the sum of those decisions.

It’s a question my team and I at TradeSmith set out to answer in 2024 with the help of thousands of lines of computer code and quintillions (billions of billions!) of market data points.

Closing the Gap With Wall Street Elites

If you don’t know us already, TradeSmith is the creator of a leading financial technology platform, based in Baltimore, Maryland.

Today, we help more than 134,000 people around the world monitor more than $29 billion in assets. And Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist have profiled our breakthroughs.

We’ve built tools to help everyday investors track portfolios, manage risk, and spot opportunities. We’ve even created, tested, and released a popular AI-trading model.

We were confident we’d find some seasonality patterns in how stocks trade. But what we discovered surprised even us.

It turns out that thousands of stocks showed historically reliable windows – specific times of the year when they tended to rise, and others when they tended to stall or fall.

We call them “green days.”

And based on these green days, we built a trading system designed to act on them – pinpointing bullish seasonal windows on roughly 5,000 stocks, down to the day. In backtests, those trades succeeded with an 83% historical accuracy rate.

You can try out our software on the stocks you own by registering for a free, limited-time trial version here. We’re making it available ahead of our Prediction 2026 event, all about the seasonal patterns you need to be aware of as we kick off the year.

First, it helps to understand that seasonality isn’t some new invention. It’s shaped markets for a long time.

Traders Have Always Tracked Cycles

Commodity traders have always tracked planting and harvest cycles. Energy markets move with heating and cooling demand. Gold has long shown seasonal strength tied to jewelry demand and annual buying patterns in India and China.

Stock investors, too, have noticed calendar effects.

The January Effect. Quarter-end rebalancing. Even the old saying “Sell in May and go away.”

What’s changed isn’t that seasonality suddenly appeared. It’s that we can now measure it precisely – across individual stocks, over decades of data, and down to specific days.

Take Target (TGT).

For all the volatility surrounding the retailer in recent years, one pattern has held with striking consistency. Between June 22 and July 21, Target stock has risen an average of 5.2%, climbing 100% of the time over the past 15 years.

That pattern held again in 2025, when the stock gained 10.3% during its seasonal window – long after pandemic-era distortions faded.

Home Depot (HD) shows a similar rhythm.

Between June 15 and July 27, the stock has risen 93% of the time over the past 15 years, with an average gain of 4.7%. In 2025, it followed the same script, rising 6.7% in just over a month.

These aren’t one-off coincidences. They’re examples of a broader phenomenon that only becomes visible when you analyze markets through the lens of timing rather than narrative.

Using our Seasonality tool, we’ve tested this approach across thousands of stocks, indexes like the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, and even currencies and commodities.

Over an 18-year backtest, seasonal trades generated 857% total growth – more than double the S&P 500’s return over the same period.

Even in 2007, the weakest year in the test, the strategy produced a positive return, with gains of more than double the S&P 500 over the same time.

Circle These Dates on Your Calendar

That’s why we’ve made a version of our Seasonality software available for you to explore now.

We’ve unlocked access so you can see the seasonal “green days” for thousands of stocks yourself ahead of our Prediction 2026 event.

It kicks off Tuesday, January 20, at 10 a.m. Eastern. And I hope you’ll join me. I’ll be getting into more detail about the fast-approaching seasonality patterns you need to be aware of.

I’ll also walk you through how we uncovered these patterns, why they persist even in chaotic markets, and how you can use them to guide real-world trading decisions.

Knowing when the windows are opening and closing likely matters more to your wealth than any single resolution you’ve made.

The first date you’ll want to circle on your calendar is January 28. If seasonality patterns hold this year, it could open up the most lucrative trading opportunity in decades.

I hope you’ll join us.

Keith Kaplan
CEO, TradeSmith

The post What New Year’s Resolutions Reveal About ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ Timing appeared first on InvestorPlace.

My colleague Keith Kaplan has been studying one of those patterns most investors overlook: Seasonality in stock prices. Not broad market trends, but the specific times of year when individual stocks have historically made their biggest moves.

If you’re a longtime reader, then you probably know that I’ve been a student of seasonal market patterns for decades. But Keith and his team at TradeSmith have taken things a step further…  By using decades of data and sophisticated analytics, they’ve uncovered recurring “buy” and “sell” windows across thousands of stocks.

To explain how this works – and why these cycles could be especially important in 2026 – Keith has prepared a special presentation called Prediction 2026, which goes live Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026 at 10 a.m. Eastern.

You can register here now to attend the event. In the meantime, Keith explains below why understanding when things happen has mattered for thousands of years.

***

Human progress didn’t start with better tools. It started with better timing.

Early humans paid close attention to repeating patterns in nature – the length of days, the return of floods, the timing of animal migrations.

Those observations gave rise to the first calendars – sometimes recorded in stone, and often anchored to the predictable cycles of the sun, moon, and stars.

This helped early farmers decide when to plant and harvest crops, and helped hunters know when herds would pass through a region.

These cycles didn’t explain why things happened. They explained when happened. And that knowledge was enough to plan around.

And when it comes to humanity’s long fascination with cycles, few monuments are as widely studied as Stonehenge in southern England.

Stonehenge, a prehistoric monument near Salisbury in southern England

Built about 4,500 years ago in several phases, Stonehenge is among the best-known prehistoric monuments.

One enduring theory about Stonehenge rests on its alignment. Its main axis points toward the sunrise on the summer solstice. That’s led archaeologists to argue that Stonehenge was designed, at least in part, to mark key points in the solar year – signals that would have helped early societies anticipate seasonal change in a world where timing meant survival.

Building a monument like this likely required generations of careful observation, tracking the sun’s annual path using little more than fixed landmarks and sightlines.

Today, we don’t need to build huge stone structures to detect patterns that can help us thrive. We have more detailed data at our disposal and a lot more analytical power to help us put it all together.

At TradeSmith, our mission is to give everyday investors access to the kinds of data and analytics once reserved for hedge funds. That work has led us to uncover a feature of the market that’s often overlooked: seasonality in stock movements.

You can’t see these cycles with the naked eye. They only show up after you run decades of data through powerful algorithms to look for them.

But once you do, a surprising picture emerges.

Thousands of stocks have historically reliable windows – specific times of year when they tend to rise and others when they tend to fall. That includes bull and bear markets, manias and panics, wars, pandemics, and more.

And I’m proud to say that, at TradeSmith, we’ve developed cutting-edge software to track those patterns. We’ve also created a rapid-fire trading strategy based on these signals that can pinpoint bullish seasonality windows on 5,000 stocks – to the day. In our backtests, the system’s trades have won with 83% accuracy.

You can try it yourself right now to see the “green day” for 5,000 different stocks when you register for our Prediction 2026 event, which airs next Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026 at 10 a.m. Eastern.

During that event, we’ll explain exactly how this works, including a new way to apply this secret in a model portfolio that’s turned every $10,000 into $85,700 in our backtests.

Then read on for more on the seasonality phenomenon in markets and how, over the last 15 years, some stocks have followed their seasonality windows with 100% historical accuracy.

Seasonality Affects ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½s, Too

Commodity traders, for example, have long tracked planting and harvest cycles in crops like corn and wheat.

Energy traders watch seasonal demand shifts tied to winter heating and summer cooling.

The gold market has recurring seasonal tendencies, often strengthening during certain parts of the year tied to jewelry demand, central bank buying, and annual festivals in India and China.

And stock investors have studied phenomena like the January Effect for decades. Even Wall Street’s old saying – “Sell in May and go away” – comes from observed seasonal behavior, not theory.

But we’ve discovered that seasonality doesn’t just apply just to commodities and the big stock market index. Every stock has its own seasons to rise or fall – a kind of summer and a kind of winter, too – year after year.

Big-box retailer Target (TGT) provides a good example.

As one of America’s largest retailers, this stock moves with the rhythms of consumer spending throughout the year. But for all the money won – and lost – on Target over the last few years, there’s one certainty…

Between June 22 and July 21, you want to buy the retail bellwether. Target has moved up an average of 5.2% during that summer period, rising 100% of the time over the past 15 years:

That’s 15 years of summertime price spikes, starting long before it fell under the pandemic-era spotlight. And in 2025, the pattern held true: Target rose 10.3% during its 29-day seasonally bullish window.

The chart you’re seeing above is from one of the breakthrough innovations from TradeSmith’s team of researchers, software engineers, and quant investors: our ground-breaking Trade Cycles Seasonality tool.

It’s an easy-to-use tool that can take one of thousands of commonly traded stocks, analyze its movements, and point out its strongest seasonality trends – with starting periods narrowed down to the day.

Here’s another example of a strong seasonality pattern, this time in Home Depot (HD):

Over the last 15 years, between June 15 to July 27, Home Depot’s share price has risen 93% of the time, with an average return of 4.7%.

And in 2025, the pattern held true again. It rose from $349.31 on June 16 to $372.69 on July 28 – a 6.7% gain in a just over a month.

A Powerful New System for Seasonal Profits

Target and Home Depot are just two examples among many others. 

Our development team has fine-tuned this tool to uncover seasonality cycles in stocks, stock market indexes like the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, as well as in currencies and commodities.

By crunching the data and compiling the historical movements of thousands of different assets and running 50,000 tests a day to analyze every stock in the major indexes, we’ve built a new system to help predict the biggest jumps on 5,000 stocks.

Over our 18-year backtest, these seasonal trades delivered 857% in total growth. That’s more than twice what the S&P 500 delivered over the same time.

Even in 2007, the worst year in our testing, we saw an average gain of 2.5% and an annualized return of 37.9%. That’s close to four times the average annual gain of the S&P 500.

The question now: How can we make this powerful system work for you?

The Power of Seasonality Is Now in Your Hands

Go here to register for access to an “unlocked” version TradeSmith’s ground-breaking Seasonality tool.

Then you can explore the results of our powerful research for the stocks you own or are thinking of buying. It’s available online until next Monday, Jan. 19.

Then on Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026 at 10 a.m. Eastern during our Prediction 2026 webinar, I’ll show you how our Seasonality tool can help you find the best time to buy and sell a stock – down to the day.

And as we start the new year, a new batch of these seasonal cycles is about to kick off…

And we’ll be sharing unfiltered access to the Seasonality tool and the top seasonal recommendations this year as part of our Trade Cycles trading advisory.

Go here now to register for the event – and give TradeSmith’s Seasonality tool a try, free of charge, before the big event.

I hope to see you there!

Keith Kaplan
CEO, TradeSmith

The post How ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½s Move in Cycles – And Why it Matters Now appeared first on InvestorPlace.

“We are not going to stop until Argentina is the country with the most freedom in the world.”

So declared Argentinean President Javier Milei before the 41st IAEF (Instituto Argentino de Ejecutivos en Finanzas) Congress in Buenos Aires last month.

The man who brought “chainsaw economics” to the world stage has been on the job for just over two years. Called “El Loco” by some of his critics, Milei has espoused “crazy” political philosophies, like, “The state is not the solution to our problems. The state is the problem!”

Armed with that matter-of-fact perspective, Milei has achieved enviable accomplishments during his just-over two years in office. This so-called anarcho-capitalist has been implementing free-ranging reforms that have unshackled the Argentine economy from decades of governmental oppression.

How’s it going so far, then?

In no particular order, here are a few choice data points to ponder as the experiment enters the “back nine”…

• Inflation has fallen to around 30% annually, from a white hot 300% per year.
• Wholesale inflation has slowed to 1.6% per month.
• Total exports just hit an all-time high.
• The private sector added +238,000 thousand jobs in the last 12 months… quadruple the 60,000+ “jobs” Milei slashed from government payrolls.
• The 4.5% accumulated growth in the first seven quarters of Milei’s presidency is the highest in the last 20 years.
• Argentina is one of the fastest growing economies in the entire Western Hemisphere, registering 5.3% growth year-over-year.

Achievements like these would rank highly in any country, including the United States.

Now, at the time Milei’s experiment began, the expert class were warning of unmitigated disaster and havoc for the country. But to the surprise of the nay-sayers, the Argentine economy has become remarkably un-devastated.

Argentinian stocks have been rallying for months. If Milei’s early successes put down roots and blossom, Argentinian stocks could rally for years.

But here’s the real heart of the matter…

Not Just ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½s — Millions of Lives Changed

But perhaps the most heartening data point of all comes from the Ministry of Human Capital. Here it is translated…

Poverty in Argentina reached 27.5% during the third quarter of 2025, according to a projection by the National Council for the Coordination of Social Policies (CNCPS) based on information from the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses.

This represents a year-over-year decrease of 10.8 percentage points compared to the third quarter of 2024… and a decrease of 27.3 percentage points since President Javier Milei took office.

It is also estimated that extreme poverty fell by 3.8 percentage points compared to the third quarter of 2024. Since the beginning of this administration, extreme poverty has decreased by 14.8 percentage points.

This means that millions of people have been lifted out of extreme poverty.

The national poverty rate has been tumbling since Milei took office in 2023. In fact, it has dropped quarter after quarter, as reported by the Ministry of Human Capital/INDEC…

• Q1 2024: 52.9%
• Q2 2024: 44.7%
• Q3 2024: 38.3%
• Q4 2024: 36.3%
• Q1 2025: 34.4%
• Q2 2025: 31.6%
• Q3 2025: 27.5%

As Argentina’s economy continues to open up to the world, investment opportunities abound.

Here’s how you can take advantage of them…

Join Me at the End of the World Summit

Now, Milei is no scientist, but his grand experiment is unleashing the dynamism of the Argentine economy.

For decades, Argentina has been a latch-key child of the global economy. But now, Milei is unlocking the door and bringing it out into the light, where it can take in some fresh air and prosper.

I’ve been actively investing in foreign markets for more than 30 years. During that time, I’ve seen numerous booms and busts.

Usually, the bust phases last only a year or two. But when countries endure chronic bust conditions, like Argentina has done during the last two decades, most investors simply forget about them… and their downtrodden markets. They become an overlooked blot on the financial landscape.

But when bust-time conditions do finally begin to reverse, spectacular stock market rallies can ensue.

If you’re not paying attention, you could miss it.

To make heads and tails of the landscape, I’m joining three legendary investors this coming Monday to discuss the potential rewards and risks the Argentine stock market may be offering.

This Investing in the End of the World Virtual Summit will take place on Monday, January 19, from 12-2pm Eastern.

Joining me are Rick Rule, Byron King, and Joel Bowman, each with decades of on-the-ground experience in global markets — and a deep focus on the resource, energy, and macro forces that can drive huge returns when a country’s fortunes finally turn.

During this summit, Joel will guide us into the unique potential of this frontier market.

You can register for the event by clicking here.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Regards,

Eric Fry

Editor, Smart Money

The post Argentina’s “Crazy” Experiment Is Working appeared first on InvestorPlace.

But my colleague Keith Kaplan, CEO of TradeSmith, has spent years proving the opposite. Beneath the noise, he’s discovered remarkably consistent patterns: specific calendar windows when individual stocks have historically risen or fallen, with surprising regularity.

He calls these bullish periods “green days.” And in backtests across 5,000 stocks, his system has identified these intervals, to the day, with 83% accuracy. Since going live with official recommendations in 2025, readers could have doubled their money 13 different times using this approach.

Keith joins us today to explain the science behind these profitable patterns. And during his Prediction 2026 event on Tuesday, January 20 at 10.a.m. Eastern, he’ll discuss what to buy – and avoid – in 2026 and how to see the biggest stock jumps coming in advance… 

2026 started with a bang.

In the early hours of the morning on Saturday, January 3, U.S. special forces carried out a raid in Caracas to arrest Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Soon after, the White House floated the idea of taking control of Greenland from NATO ally Denmark – a move that, if pushed far enough, would test the foundations of the world’s largest military alliance.

And there’s plenty of drama back at home, too.

The Supreme Court is due to decide on the legality of tariffs, forcing companies across the economy to rethink supply chains and pricing.

And President Trump is expected to name a new Federal Reserve chair – a choice that could shape interest rates and stock prices for years.

And that’s before you factor in the breakneck speed at which AI is advancing and the changes it’s bringing to society, whether we like it or not.

When the world feels unstable, it’s natural to assume markets must be unstable too – chaotic, unpredictable, and hostage to the next headline.

But this common assumption overlooks something important…

While the barrage of news headlines can seem scary, most systems move in cycles. There are steady, repeatable rhythms that persist even when, on the surface, these systems may look chaotic.

The natural world works this way. So does the stock market.

You can’t see these cycles with the naked eye. They only show up after you run decades of data and quintillions (billions of billions!) of data points through powerful algorithms. 

But once you do, a surprising picture emerges. 

Thousands of stocks have historically reliable windows – specific calendar days of each year – when they tend to rise and others when they tend to fall. That includes bull and bear markets, manias and panics, wars, pandemics, and more.

I’m proud to say that, at TradeSmith, we’ve built cutting-edge software to track those patterns. We’ve also created a rapid-fire trading strategy based on these signals that can pinpoint bullish stock seasonality windows on 5,000 stocks – to the day. In our backtests, the system’s trades have won with 83% accuracy.

You can try it yourself right now to see the “green day” for 5,000 different stocks when you register for our Prediction 2026 event, which airs next Tuesday, January 20, at 10 a.m. Eastern.

During that event, we’ll explain exactly how this works, including a new way to apply this secret in a model portfolio that’s turned every $10,000 into $85,700 in our backtests.

Then read on for more on the seasonality phenomenon in markets and how, over the last 15 years, some stocks have followed their seasonality windows with 100% historical accuracy.

Stock Seasonality: The Hidden Patterns Behind ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ Movements

Once you start looking, you’ll find seasonal patterns everywhere.

Birds migrate on nearly the same schedule every year. Whales follow sea routes that line up with breeding seasons and feeding cycles tied to ocean temperatures. Even trees conserve energy and grow seasonally based on the length of days and shifts in temperature.

We see seasonality patterns in the economy, too.

Retail spending reliably spikes in December. Electricity demand rises each summer as air conditioners come on. Airline bookings surge ahead of holidays, then cool off in predictable lulls once peak travel passes

Investor behavior follows a calendar, too. 

Investors rebalance portfolios and harvest tax losses in December, then put money back to work in January. Mutual fund flows tend to increase early in the year as retirement contributions reset. And professional money managers adjust exposure before the end of each quarter to manage risk and reporting.

Human decisions shape markets. So, it shouldn’t be surprising that stock prices show seasonal tendencies as well.

This may be news to most regular investors, but traders have known about these patterns for decades.

Professional Traders Already Use These Seasonal Windows

Commodity traders, for example, have long tracked planting and harvest cycles in crops like corn and wheat. 

Energy traders watch seasonal demand shifts tied to winter heating and summer cooling.

The gold market has also shown recurring seasonal tendencies, often strengthening during certain parts of the year tied to jewelry demand, central bank buying, and annual festivals in India and China.

And stock investors have studied phenomena such as the January Effect for decades. Even Wall Street’s old saying – “Sell in May and go away” – comes from observed seasonal behavior, not theory.

The only thing that’s changed is how precisely we can track these seasonal phenomena.

Today, we can discover these patterns across thousands of stocks, over decades of history, and measure them down to specific days – not just months or quarters.

That’s what my team and I set out to do at TradeSmith.

We built software to analyze more than 2 quintillion data points across roughly 5,000 stocks, running millions of historical tests to answer a simple question:

Is there an optimal time of year to buy – and an optimal time to sell – each individual stock?

When we tested this approach over the past 18 years, the results were remarkably consistent.

A straightforward seasonality strategy produced a positive average return every single year in our study. The typical trade lasted about 18 days and generated an average gain of about 6% – modest in isolation, but meaningful when repeated. 

More importantly, the strategy didn’t fall apart when markets did.

It held up during the financial crisis. During the pandemic. During the 2022 selloff. The exact dates shifted slightly, but the cycles themselves persisted.

How Stock Seasonality Works Even During ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ Crashes

One example still stands out.

In early 2009, at the depths of the Great Recession, Netflix (NFLX) entered a seasonal “green zone” – our indicator that a move up is imminent – in late January. Historically, beginning around January 21, the stock has risen roughly 20% over the following 80 days about 93% of the time. 

Even in 2009 – when fear dominated markets – Netflix followed the same pattern and moved higher.

We’ve seen the same behavior play out repeatedly in recent years.

• Take Intuit (INTU). In one seasonal window, the stock rose about 13% in just 15 days – a move that showed up consistently in historical testing.
• Or Blackstone (BX), which advanced roughly 7.6% over a 20-day seasonal window, even as broader market sentiment was shaky.
• Or Entegris (ENTG). During the 2022 bear market, the stock rose about 7% in a 43-day seasonal window – a period when many investors assumed nothing was safe.

What mattered in each case wasn’t the business or the backdrop. It was the time of year.

That doesn’t mean every year looks identical. The precise “best day” can shift as new data comes in, which is why our system updates regularly.

But the cycles themselves don’t disappear.

When we tested a simple approach – focusing only on historically bullish “green zones” and avoiding bearish “red zones” – we demonstrated that many of the market’s biggest short-term moves clustered tightly around these seasonal windows regardless of headlines.

Your Edge In an Unpredictable 2026 ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½

Living in the second decade of the 21^st century can often feel bamboozling. 

We’re being constantly buffeted by geopolitical shifts, economic threats like inflation, and exponential technological change… especially AI.

You don’t need to predict the next geopolitical shock… Fed decision… or figure out the future of humanity… to invest well and grow your wealth.. But you do need a way to understand when the odds are historically tilted in your favor – and when they aren’t.

That’s what makes stock seasonality so valuable.

So, make sure you’re registered for our Prediction 2026 event. 

You’ll get immediate access to an “unlocked” version of TradeSmith’s ground-breaking Seasonality tool. 

You can explore the results of our powerful research for the stocks you own or are thinking of buying. It’s available online until next Monday, January 19. 

Then, on Tuesday, January 20, I’ll walk you through how we uncovered these patterns in stocks… why seasonality keeps working even when markets feel uncertain… and how you can use our software to spot hidden seasonality trends.

I’ll also share a free stock recommendation, so you can see how this works in real time – not just in backtests.

ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½s will always feel noisy. And 2026 is no exception.

To get an edge, you need to know which signals to ignore – and which patterns have been there all along, hidden in the data.

Here’s that link again to register your spot.

The post Stock Seasonality 2026: The Exact Days to Buy and Sell appeared first on InvestorPlace.

It isn’t an asset bubble like the dot-com era.

It isn’t a recession.

And it isn’t inflation.

It’s deflation.

When prices start falling, the damage doesn’t happen overnight.

It creeps in quietly.

Spending slows, debts grow heavier, economic momentum fades…

The result is a general economic malaise that can be devastating for investors.

In Japan, deflation persisted for years. It followed a massive asset boom, then settled in slowly. Prices drifted lower, growth stalled, then stocks went sideways.

What followed wasn’t a crash.

It was a lost decade. Then another.

That’s why deflation is so dangerous for investors. It doesn’t force decisions. It encourages waiting. It creates stagnation.

ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½s like that can quietly cost you years.

We don’t want that here, folks.

And that’s why this week’s inflation numbers matter more than most investors realize.

Because the fact is, I’m already seeing early signs of deflation.

Household prices are shrinking, crude oil prices are low and the global population is shrinking, especially in Asia and parts of Europe.

But the trouble is, the Federal Reserve is still worried about inflation.

So, this week’s inflation reports should provide a clearer picture of whether the Fed’s concerns are justified – or if those deflationary signs are getting louder.

In today’s ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ 360, I’ll dive into the details of the inflation reports, explain the signs of deflation I’m seeing and what the Fed needs to do about it.

Then, to wrap things up, I’ll tell you about why you need to be on guard for sudden market shifts, and how to prepare for the next one I see coming.

Consumer Price Index

Let’s start off with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) report, released on Tuesday.

In November, headline CPI rose 0.3% from the prior month and 2.7% year over year. Both numbers came in right in line with economists’ expectations.

Core CPI, which strips out food and energy costs, rose 0.2% over the previous month and 2.6% year over year. Both numbers were 0.1% below expectations.

Digging deeper into the report, food costs rose 0.7% and utility costs went up 6.17% over the previous 12 months.

The biggest contributor to the increase overall, however, was shelter costs. Shelter was up 0.4% in November, while owners’ equivalent rent (OER) was up 0.3%.

This is important because shelter accounts for more than one-third of the CPI weighting,  and it was up 3.2% on an annual basis.

This was surprising to me, because this data has been sticky for a while – even though we have plenty of other data suggesting housing prices are falling. But more on that in a minute…

Some areas of the report did show signs of deflation, though. Used vehicle prices declined 1.1%, while new vehicle prices were flat – and the communication index fell 1.9%.

Producer Price Index

Next, we have the Producer Price Index (PPI), which came out on Wednesday morning.

While CPI shows what consumers are paying, PPI tells us what businesses are charging one another. In many cases, it’s an early warning signal for where consumer prices are headed next.

It’s also important to note that due to the government shutdown, this report had delayed data for October as well as the current data for November.

For October, wholesale prices rose 0.1%. In November, prices rose 0.2%. On a year-over-year basis, producer prices are up roughly 3%.

November’s headline PPI was slightly below expectations for a 0.3% increase. On a year-over-year basis, producer prices were up 2.7%.

Core PPI – which strips out food, energy and trade services – was flat in November after a sharper increase in October. That pushed the year-over-year core figure higher to 3.5%, but only because it’s still capturing stronger price gains from earlier in the year.

Now, this is where investors need to be careful.

The monthly data tells a different story than the annual headlines. Price increases at the producer level are flattening, not accelerating. Businesses are finding it harder to push through higher prices, even as some costs remain elevated.

In other words, the backward-looking numbers look hotter than the current trend.

Adding to the confusion is the quality of the data itself. This PPI report was compiled during a prolonged government shutdown, meaning some price data could not be fully collected.

In other words, this was a report full of noisy data, folks.

The Deflation Signs… And What the Fed Needs to Do About Them

Deflation rarely announces itself in a single data point. It shows up in patterns. In fact, I’m already seeing three signs of deflation.

First, there’s housing. Remember when I said the OER number surprised me?

Well, I’ve looked at home sales surveys, and prices have been declining for the past six months, not rising.

So, it’s frustrating that OER went up even though data shows prices are falling, making this a loud deflationary signal.

The second sign is energy.

Crude oil prices are lower, due in large part to President Trump’s “drill baby drill” energy policies. The decisive action in Venezuela, combined with possible resolution to conflicts in other global hotspots, could ensure U.S. energy prices remain low for decades.

Stranger things have happened, and it needs to factor into the Fed’s thinking.

Finally, there’s demographics.

The reality is we are importing deflation from China. Their industrial policy, combined with shrinking households, means that China has a big problem on its hands.

In fact, all of Asia’s population is shrinking, along with parts of Europe. Fewer workers and fewer consumers mean less natural demand growth over time. That’s a powerful deflationary force that doesn’t reverse quickly.

Taken individually, none of these guarantees deflation.

Taken together, they suggest inflation pressure is fading – and stagnation risk is rising.

How to Prepare for the Next ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ Shift

So, what does the Federal Reserve need to do?

It needs to keep cutting rates – potentially several more times this year – before deflationary pressures become entrenched.

History shows why this matters.

In Japan, once the asset bubble burst, the market didn’t collapse overnight. It stalled. Growth disappeared. Stocks went sideways for years. Investors waited for a recovery that never really came.

That’s how lost decades are created.

And I’m starting to see echoes of that same setup today.

Not a sudden crash – but a slow-moving shift that leaves investors stuck in stagnant markets, relying on big, familiar names that quietly stop delivering real growth.

That’s why I recently hosted a special briefing called Hidden Crash 2026.

In it, I explain why the next market risk isn’t panic or volatility – it’s stagnation. And why investors who stay anchored to the biggest, most widely owned stocks could find themselves waiting years for meaningful gains.

But here’s the good news.

When shifts like this happen, growth doesn’t just disappear. A small group of stocks continue to do the heavy lifting, preparing the way for the next phase.

I call these companies Edge Innovators.

These are the companies driving real earnings growth, real innovation and real returns, even when the broader market goes nowhere.

These are the stocks that can help you stay ahead of a slow-moving market shift instead of getting trapped by it.

Click here to watch now and learn how you can position yourself for this next phase of the market.

Sincerely,

Louis Navellier

Editor, ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ 360

The post The Quiet ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ Risk This Week’s Inflation Data Doesn’t Show appeared first on InvestorPlace.

Bitcoin is on the cusp of reaching a critical technical level – and what happens there could reignite the bull market…or trigger the next painful leg lower in a crypto winter.

Our crypto expert, Luke Lango, put this pivot point on our radar last fall.

As Bitcoin was crashing, Luke noted that his biggest concern was the loss of its 50-week moving average (MA).

From Luke:

In past cycles, this level has often marked the end of the party.

Excluding the COVID anomaly, every meaningful break-and-close below the 50-week MA with the slope rolling over has marked the end of a boom cycle.

In early November, Bitcoin fell below this critical line in the sand. But rather than continue to fall, it began churning sideways. And since Christmas week, it’s been climbing – up about 10% since then.

While we’re encouraged, the real test – the 50-week MA – is rapidly approaching, which you can see below in Bitcoin’s two-year chart.

Source: StockCharts

Bitcoin’s price history offers clues about how this might play out.

Bearish: In early 2022, Bitcoin lost its 50-week MA, rallied hard to briefly touch it, only to immediately collapse – losing more than 60% into early 2023.

Bullish: In early 2023, Bitcoin rallied to test its 50-week MA, got rejected, but strengthened and soon pushed through. It then soared about 200% into spring 2024.

Below you can see these two paths.

One thing should immediately jump out to you…

The bearish outcome took place on the heels of a crypto bull market, while the bullish outcome happened following a bear market.

We’re coming off a bull, which suggests a greater likelihood of the outcome crypto investors don’t want.

Could this time be different?

Sure – as we’ve pointed out in the Digest, Bitcoin is maturing from a moonshot “full risk” speculation to a heavily invested part of the mainstream financial infrastructure, supported by institutional dollars.

While that potentially limits the massive upside that Bitcoin investors enjoyed in the past, it could also cap the stomach-churning collapses.

Still, caution is our default position today.

As we eye the 50-week MA at roughly $101,500, we recall Luke’s analysis from December:

If we get rejected at the 50-week – like we did in July 2018 and March 2022 – that’ll be a very bearish signal for Bitcoin.

Those were bear-market rejections. Hard stops. Pivot points that preceded massive downturns.

But if we jump above the 50-week and sail higher – like we did in May 2020 – that’ll be a very bullish signal for Bitcoin.

That moment kicked off the most explosive bull market since 2017.

As I write on Thursday, Bitcoin has about 5% left to climb before we hit this critical level.

We’ll keep you updated.

Checking in on “analog” Bitcoin (gold) and its silver sister

Over the past year, we’ve consistently urged Digest readers to own both gold and silver. But as relative value has shifted, we’ve also been clear about which metal should lead at different points in the cycle.

Last year, when the gold-to-silver ratio stretched to extreme levels, we argued that silver was the better horse for outperformance.

But today, that ratio has collapsed. Is the leadership baton about to pass back to gold?

To unpack this, let’s revisit the gold-to-silver ratio – a long-standing measure of relative value between the two metals to see what it’s telling us now.

Simply put, this ratio tells us how many ounces of silver equal the price of one ounce of gold.

Historically, this ratio has been mean-reverting.

• In the 20th century, it averaged roughly 47:1
• From 2000 through 2020, it averaged closer to 60:1

In the first half of 2025, however, fear and a preference for gold sent the ratio above 105 – just shy of its COVID-panic peak. At that point, silver was deeply undervalued relative to gold.

But as the ratio began to roll over, we flagged silver’s asymmetric upside. In our July 25 Digest, we wrote:

We don’t anticipate a meaningful decline in gold’s price beyond normal profit-taking and healthy “two steps forward, one step back” market action.

Therefore, if the gold/silver ratio is to continue normalizing to the more recent average of around 60, it’ll be up to silver to do the heavy lifting – meaning silver’s price gains must outpace those of gold.

That’s exactly what we expect.

Sure enough, since that Digest, while gold has climbed 37%, silver has exploded 136%.

But after this blistering rally, is it time to bet on gold for outperformance?

Silver’s explosive move has dramatically reset the gold-to-silver ratio. As I write Thursday, it sits at about 51 – its lowest level since 2012. This is below the modern historical norm and even beneath the 2000–2020 average.

Practically speaking, it means silver has gone from undervalued to relatively expensive versus gold in a very short period.

Now, this doesn’t mean silver must crash. But it does suggest the easy relative gains are behind us.

From here, history argues that gold is more likely to outperform silver as the ratio works its way back toward equilibrium, which we’d peg in the mid-to-upper 50s, with 58 to 60 as a reasonable medium-term target.

Bottom line: Silver did exactly what we expected when the ratio was extreme. Now that the pendulum has swung the other way, the smarter relative bet is shifting back toward gold – even if both metals continue rising in absolute terms.

What does historical data say about a gold trade right now?

It backs us up. In short, it says that now is a good time to bank on higher gold prices.

At least that’s the takeaway from TradeSmith’s Seasonality Tool.

For newer Digest readers, TradeSmith is our corporate affiliate and one of the preeminent quant shops in the investment industry. They support more than 130,000 investors worldwide, monitoring roughly $29 billion in assets through its analytics and portfolio tools.

Their Seasonality Tool is an example of those tools: it scans thousands of securities to uncover historically reliable calendar-based patterns that can help investors better time entries and exits, even in volatile or sideways markets.

To illustrate using gold, let’s turn to the SPDR Gold Shares ETF (GLD).

As you can see below, GLD is in the middle of a highly consistent seasonal strength period running between January 8 and January 30.

This is a tightly defined window that has repeated across market cycles, inflation regimes, and geopolitical backdrops.

Here’s how GLD has behaved historically during this January window:

• 93.33% accuracy rate
• +2.22% average return
• +1.40% median return
• +36.83% annualized return

In other words, nearly every year over the tested period, gold has moved higher during this stretch – regardless of whether the stock market was rising, falling, or chopping sideways.

This is an example of why knowing seasonal trends for your portfolio holdings matters

Gold doesn’t just respond to inflation fears or Fed speculation in real time.

It often moves ahead of those narratives, following recurring behavioral and liquidity-driven patterns that only show up when you analyze the data across decades.

Similarly, thousands of stocks follow their own patterns – specific windows of time during which history suggests they’re likely to outperform.

This is the type of insight the TradeSmith Seasonality Tool is designed to provide investors – not just for gold, but for more than 5,000 stocks, ETFs, commodities, and currencies.

Next Tuesday, January 20 at 10 a.m. Eastern, TradeSmith CEO Keith Kaplan will walk through how this system works at the Prediction 2026 event – including how these seasonal windows are identified, tested, and applied in real-world trading.

When you register to attend, you’ll get immediate access to the Seasonality Tool.

Here’s Keith:

You can use the tool to explore the results of our powerful research for the stocks you own or are thinking of buying. It’s available online until Monday, January 19.

Then at our Prediction 2026 webinar, I’ll show you how our Seasonality tool can help you find the best time to buy and sell a stock – down to the day.

You can sign up for the event right here.

Whether you use the Seasonality Tool or not, just recognize that in a high-valuation market like we have today, when you act can matter just as much as what you own.

Coming full circle…

With Bitcoin at a technical inflection point and relative value shifting across the precious metals complex, timing is becoming as important as conviction.

We’ll continue to monitor these developments – and highlight where historical data offers an edge – right here in the Digest.

Have a good evening,

Jeff Remsburg

Disclaimer: I own GLD.

The post Watch This Massive Test for Bitcoin appeared first on InvestorPlace.

Clothing firms are often millionaire-makers hiding in plain sight. 

Consider Skechers USA Inc. (now owned by a private equity firm), a shoe brand that became wildly popular among middle-schoolers a decade ago. Anyone who got in early would have skipped away with a 10X return.

Skechers share price, 2012-2015

The same was true for Lululemon Athletica Inc. (LULU) during the late 2010s. The Vancouver-based company turned yoga pants into a wardrobe staple. Here’s what shares did starting in 2017… 

Lululemon share price, 2017-2020

Even now, there are runaway successes happening under our noses. Here’s a look at the share-price action of Aritzia Inc. (ATZAF), another Vancouver company that has become a multibillion-dollar firm almost overnight. Its effortless-but-obviously-curated look has taken TikTok by storm… and turned many of Aritzia’s early investors into millionaires.

Aritzia share price, 2023 to present

The wonderful thing about these companies is that you don’t have to be a high-powered banker on Wall Street to pick out these winners. (In fact, most Wall Streeters I know have almost zero knowledge about these fashion trends.) Nor do you need fancy spreadsheets or a Bloomberg terminal.

Instead, you just need to have an eye for what people are wearing… or at least a family member who does. If your middle school kid is suddenly asking for a particular new brand with “drip,” you might have a future 10X stock.

In fact, there’s a famous story from legendary investor Peter Lynch, where he admits that one of his best-ever stock ideas came after seeing his wife buy L’Eggs pantyhose. These department store-quality hosieries were incredibly popular among his wife and her friends, and Lynch’s observation allowed him to get in before other investors.

After all, companies that don’t sell to middle-aged men working on Wall Street are often invisible to this cohort right until they aren’t.

That’s why I’m so excited about my latest pick – a centuries-old shoe company that has become cool again thanks to Gen Z icons like Kendall Jenner, Gigi Hadid, and Kaia Gerber. (If those names are unfamiliar to you, don’t worry; I had to ask my kids who these influencers are.)

Gen Z has an entirely different sense of what’s “cool” from previous generations. But being “in the know” could put some serious style, and gains, into your portfolio. 

Allow me to explain…

A Recommendation With Style

Gone is the “extreme” look of Gen X – the spiked belts, wallet chains, and Doc Martens from the 1980s and 1990s. The same goes for the layered logo T-shirts that millennials once sported. Their Livestrong bracelets and varsity jackets now sit forgotten in attics and basements.

Instead, Gen Z are sporting an “ugly is the new cool” look. They grew up seeing the young Prince George wear yellow Crocs. (The same ones Gen X/Y icon Victoria Beckham allegedly said she’d “rather die” than wear.)

Members of Gen Z are turning Goodwill finds into TikTok treasures.

Even metal braces have made a comeback. 

In other words, we’re seeing a widespread, once-in-a-generation shift that’s taking the world by storm. What was once counterculture is now “in.” This shift has turned my own kids’ wardrobes into a statement of “I didn’t try” (though effort was definitely involved)… and my latest footwear pick into a $2-billion-a-year company that still flies under the radar. 

To top it off, Gen Alpha is now getting in on this trend. As an article in Parents magazine recently noted, teens and tweens are now trading in their Nike Slides for footwear made by my latest recommendation…

Teens and tweens are going wild for the classic sandals, often pairing them with crew socks…

The shoes are available in more than just the classic neutrals, now offering fun shades like faded purple and copper. These fun pops of color are perfect for summer days by the pool, or the complement Gen Alpha’s version of a preppy outfit…

“These are my daughter’s favorite sandals,” says one mom on Amazon.

That means my latest pick could see its recent 25% selloff turn into one of the best buying opportunities of the decade.

Young fashionistas (who obviously don’t try too hard) are pairing products from this company with everything from oversized blazers to crew socks… and all this demand is turning my latest Fry’s Investment Report pick into a multi-bagger hiding in your kids’ closet.

Make Your Move Before This Goes Out of Style

Now, I can’t tell you why these shoes are so popular. It’s like trying to explain why the “Dogtown” surf and skate culture was so prevalent in Southern California while I was growing up. Or why that look eventually morphed into the punk style that Gen X adopted.

It just happened.

But I can tell you that these big shifts can happen without Wall Street realizing it until after the fact. You see, analyst projections usually take past financial data and draw trendlines into the future. If a company grew 10% last year, then surely it must grow another 10% the next…

And we know clothing brands don’t do that.

Instead, these fashion-oriented companies can see their fortunes turn on a dime, or on a well-timed TikTok trend. Trends that were previously considered uncool suddenly become cool again. These types of turning points helped drive another one of my Fry’s Investment Report apparel picks, a global luxury and lifestyle brand, up 84% since I recommended it last April.

When a clothing trend gets popular, it tends to get very popular, very quickly.

What’s more, my latest recommendation just delivered the strongest year in its history as a publicly held company, and continues to invest in future capacity, distribution, and premium mix expansion.

Demand is booming, while disciplined production growth prevents product saturation and discounted pricing. The brand continues to extend into new, fast-growing geographies. The direct-to-consumer channel is robust and growing.

The result is a company whose annual revenues and net profit are now more than double what they were four years ago, and whose stock is still trading at a discounted value.

I just released my in-depth analysis on this company in my January issue of Fry’s Investment Report earlier this week.

You can learn how to access my full research here.

Regards,

Eric Fry

The post This $2B/Year Shoe Brand Just Dropped 25% — Here’s Why I’m Buying appeared first on InvestorPlace.

At CES 2026, the show floor overflowed with many high-tech curiosities, as usual – a soft-plastic composter, smart Legos, an ultrasonic chef’s knife, even a ring that records conversations with a tap. But for the first time in years, the vaporware haze lifted – revealing something concrete.

Until now, “robotics” at CES meant something akin to a little wheeled trash can that could follow you around while carrying a single beverage. It was a novelty; a toy.

Last week, the toys matured. They got jobs. And they are coming for ours.

For three years, we’ve been perfecting AI’s ‘brain’ – large language and generative models. Now we’re building its ‘body.’

If you thought ChatGPT was disruptive because it could write a workable marketing email, wait until you see what happens when physical AI can unload a shipping container for 16 hours straight without a coffee break.

Welcome to the Humanoid Breakout. 

Here’s why this cycle represents genuine commercial traction – and where we see the highest-conviction opportunities.

Boston Dynamics’ Atlas Robot Enters Factory Production

The shift from science fiction to reality became undeniable last week – and one demo, in particular, made it palpable.

The inflection point came during Hyundai‘s keynote via Boston Dynamics‘ Atlas robot.

For years, Atlas was an engineering marvel – with no commercial purpose. The bot did backflips and parkour and danced to Motown.

But at CES 2026, Hyundai (which owns Boston Dynamics) put Atlas to work.

It unveiled the “Production Atlas”: fully electric, sleek, and remarkably quiet. But the real shock wasn’t a backflip; it was an unexciting demo of “parts sequencing.”

Hyundai showed Atlas walking into a disorganized staging area in a mock factory, identifying heavy car components with its new Google DeepMind-powered reasoning ‘brain,’ and precisely placing them onto an assembly line feeder.

The most telling moment was how it moved. When Atlas needed to turn around, it didn’t shuffle its feet like a human. Its torso spun 180 degrees while its legs stayed planted, then bent its knees backward to walk away. It was unnerving to watch – because it was a reminder that these things aren’t constrained by human biology. They are designed for pure efficiency.

Hyundai announced Atlas will be deployed to its Georgia Metaplant this year, moving from R&D project to capital equipment.

Tesla’s Optimus: Manufacturing Scale Meets Humanoid Robotics

If Atlas showed what’s technically possible, Tesla (TSLA) showed what’s commercially inevitable.

While Hyundai is polishing the ‘Ferrari’ of humanoids, Elon Musk is busy trying to build the ‘Model T.’

Tesla’s Optimus project has been easy to mock. Remember the person in the spandex suit dancing on stage? That seems like a lifetime ago.

In late 2025, that narrative shifted. Tesla began deploying Gen 3 Optimus bots inside its own Austin Gigafactory. They aren’t doing complex tasks yet, just moving boxes and sorting basic parts. But the bots are doing it all autonomously, powered by the same Full Self-Driving (FSD) neural nets that run Tesla cars.

Musk, never one to shy away from hyperbole, has doubled down in recent earnings calls. He has repeatedly stated that “Optimus will eventually be worth more than the car business and FSD combined.” That claim sounds bold – until you realize the total addressable market (TAM) for “manual labor” is basically infinite.

The beauty of the Tesla play is that it doesn’t need to find customers. Tesla is the customer. Musk needs thousands of these things just to keep his own factories running. And that internal demand provides a massive runway to perfect the technology before selling it to others. 

Expect 2026 to bring the first true ‘fleet’ deployments inside Tesla – the moment when Optimus shifts from prototype to workforce.

1X NEO Brings Humanoid Robots Home at $20,000

Now, this story doesn’t end on factory floors. The next frontier is far closer to home.

Also launching this year is the NEO bot from robotics startup 1X. Unlike the industrial look of Atlas or Optimus, NEO is softer, lighter, and moves with an almost-human grace.

But the headline isn’t the design; it’s the price tag: $20,000, about the price of a mid-range used car.

It’s not cheap, but it’s not “industrial equipment” money. It’s a price point that upper-middle-class early adopters can rationalize for a machine that can supposedly fold laundry, load the dishwasher, and tidy up the house.

Whether NEO actually works as advertised in a chaotic home environment remains to be seen. But the psychological barrier has been breached. A humanoid robot is no longer something you see in a sci-fi movie; it’s something you can pre-order right now.

And this race for the home and factory has triggered a ‘land grab’ for the one thing these robots need to survive: spatial intelligence.

Mobileye Acquires Mentee as M&A Activity Accelerates

When a new sector is truly breaking out, you often see consolidation. The incumbents get nervous and buy the upstarts to acquire their talent and data.

We just got that signal. Mobileye (MBLY), the giant in automotive vision and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), just announced its acquisition of Mentee Robotics.

Why does a car sensor company want a bipedal robot? Because the challenge is the same: a self-driving car must interpret the world in real time to avoid collisions, just as a humanoid robot must do to navigate a living room. It’s all about “spatial intelligence” and navigating unstructured environments. 

Mobileye realized its vision stack isn’t just for things with wheels; it’s for anything that moves autonomously. We see this as massive validation that the underlying technology for humanoids is maturing.

With the technology validated and the market starting to consolidate, the next phase is all about positioning – who profits as humanoids scale from demo units to deployment fleets.

11 Best Humanoid Robot Stocks Across the Supply Chain

We are witnessing the birth of a new hardware supercycle. The companies that supply the brains, muscles, and eyes for these machines are about to see demand explode.

Don’t just bet on the robot makers – that’s the low-margin end of the business. Own the bottlenecks instead.

Here is our roadmap for playing the Humanoid Breakout of 2026.

Rare Earth and Lithium Stocks Powering Robotics Growth

You can’t build a million robots without the magnetic materials that make their motors spin. And the supply chain for rare earths is severely constrained.

• MP Materials (MP): The premier Western play. If the Pentagon wants U.S.-made robots, they need MP’s California mine.
• Albemarle (ALB): These bots are battery-hungry. ALB is the blue-chip lithium volume leader.

Leaders of the Robotics Vision Stack

Of course, a robot that can’t see is just a very expensive paperweight.

• Ambarella (AMBA): This is our top pick for vision. Why? Latency. When a robot drops a glass, it can’t wait for a signal to go to the cloud and back to catch it. AMBA makes low-power AI chips that process vision on the edge instantly.
• Ouster (OUST): The “industrial” LiDAR leader. It isn’t chasing low-margin car deals; they are putting lasers on factory bots.

Critical Actuator and Motion Control Stocks

This is the most boring and profitable part of robotics: the gears that allow an arm to hold a 50lb box steady.

• Harmonic Drive Systems (HSYDF): The near-monopoly on high-precision “strain wave gears.” It’s virtually indispensable in precision robotics.
• Moog (MOG.A): For when the robots get bigger and need heavy-duty hydraulics and motion control.

The “Brains” & Connectivity

NVIDIA (NVDA) owns the training. But who owns the deployment?

• Qualcomm (QCOM): Our favorite new play for 2026. Its new “Dragonwing” chips are designed specifically for robots that need both 5G connectivity and on-device AI computing. If you have a fleet of 100 robots in a warehouse, they are talking to each other via Qualcomm.
• NVIDIA: An obvious choice. Every single robot is trained in NVIDIA’s “Isaac Sim” virtual gymnasium before it ever takes a real step.

Humanoid Robot Manufacturers and Top Automation Stocks

This is the high-risk, high-reward layer.

• Tesla: The only company with the manufacturing scale and internal demand to brute-force humanoid adoption.
• Symbotic (SYM): The less “sexy” yet highly effective play. The company is already automating Walmart‘s (WMT) supply chain with non-humanoid bots. It will integrate humanoids as the tech matures.
• PROCEPT BioRobotics (PRCT): The healthcare angle. While everyone watches factory bots, PRCT is quietly revolutionizing surgery with high-growth robotics.

Taken together, these trends mark more than a product cycle – they mark the start of a new industrial era. Robots are moving from the showroom to the supply chain. And for investors, that shift isn’t theoretical anymore – it’s investable.

The Final Word

The window to front-run this trend is closing fast. 

The demos are done; the factory orders are being placed. It’s time to allocate accordingly.

The next wave of the AI Boom isn’t staying on a screen. Across factories, warehouses, and hospitals, intelligent machines are stepping into the real world – powered by the same rare-earth magnets and motion systems now being built on U.S. soil.

It’s the natural extension of the AI Capex Boom – and it’s where we see the next 10X opportunity taking shape.

Click here to discover the top plays in the coming AI-robotics surge.

The post Humanoid Robot Stocks: CES 2026 Reveals Commercial Breakout appeared first on InvestorPlace.

Let’s kick off today’s issue with a trade idea from veteran trader Jonathan Rose.

I first highlighted it in the Digest on September 9. Since then, it’s up 68%. But subscribers who got in when Jonathan profiled it in August are up closer to 135%.

The good news is that the opportunity hasn’t passed you by. The trade thesis still fits cleanly into where the market (and Washington) are headed next.

I’m talking about aerospace/defense company Karman (KRMN).

Why we flagged KRMN early

KRMN isn’t a household name – quite the opposite.

It’s a small defense contractor doing the unglamorous, but critical, work that helps missiles fly and rockets launch. It’s the kind of company that stays under the radar until the tailwinds become impossible to ignore.

But when Jonathan found it, he saw two green flags – one broad, one narrow.

On the broad front, he focused on the widening divergence between the Nasdaq 100 and the Russell 2000. Mega-cap tech was ripping higher, while small caps were being left behind.

Jonathan didn’t see that divergence as a red flag. He saw it as stored energy – particularly for leading small-cap players such as KRMN.

That kind of divergence is a coiled spring, and when it releases, it’s small caps that get the explosive move.

On the narrow front, the global security backdrop was deteriorating, not improving.

The war in Ukraine was grinding on. The conflict in Gaza was continuing. Tensions with Iran were rising. And defense budgets – particularly in the U.S. and among allies – were already trending higher as governments recalibrated for a more volatile world.

Viewed through that lens, Karman stood out.

As Jonathan put it at the time:

When I look at KRMN, I see a powerful policy tailwind, deep government ties, and a market that’s still sleeping on the story.

So, Karman checked every box:

• A leading small-cap poised to outperform
• Deep government relationships
• Exposure to defense modernization
• And a market that, at the time, was still largely sleeping on the story

The results speak for themselves. As noted earlier, since we profiled KRMN, it’s climbed 68%.

Why Jonathan is still bullish

Even with that move, Jonathan’s conviction hasn’t faded.

Here’s what he told me yesterday:

Karman is still growing quickly, with mission-critical systems already embedded in defense and space programs. That gives the company real visibility into future revenue.

We’re seeing investors rotate toward next-generation defense technology – leaning into growth-focused names over the traditional legacy contractors.

With earnings up more than 230% year-on-year and a market cap still well under $5 billion, KRMN is the perfect opportunity to get into a massively undervalued stock before the herd climbs in.

And this brings us to the bigger picture – and why the tailwinds behind KRMN are likely to continue.

In November, the Department of Defense released its National Security Strategy – a document that effectively codifies the same forces that first drew Jonathan to Karman in the first place…

Three themes stand out:

• Reshoring and re-industrialization –rebuilding domestic manufacturing capacity, securing supply chains, and reducing reliance on foreign inputs.
• A revolution in military affairs – accelerating defense modernization across advanced weapons systems, space assets, cyber capabilities, and next-generation platforms.
• Domestic security priorities –strengthening energy dominance, infrastructure resilience, and access to critical resources at home.

This isn’t abstract policy language. It’s a signal about where capital, contracts, and political will are likely to flow over the coming years.

KRMN sits squarely in the supply chain that enables modern defense systems – the kind of components and capabilities that become more valuable when the U.S. prioritizes military readiness, domestic production, and technological edge.

So, the same forces that helped push KRMN to nearly 70% gains since we first profiled it haven’t gone away. If anything, they’re becoming stronger.

That’s why Jonathan continues to view KRMN not as a trade that’s “played out,” but as one that still fits the direction of policy, spending, and market rotation.

As he just noted:

A powerful policy tailwind. Deep government ties. A market that’s still sleeping on the story.

That’s the exact recipe that’s given us our biggest winners. And I believe KRMN is next in line.

I want to cover additional ground today, but for more of Jonathan’s past analysis into KRMN, check out his free Masters in Trading Live episode “5 Reasons to Buy KRMN.”

Beyond the KRMN analysis, the video is an example of the high-quality market insights Jonathan delivers every day that the markets are open in his Masters in Trading Live broadcasts.

You can sign up for those free, daily market videos right here.

As I’ve said before, Jonathan is one of the best teachers/traders in our industry, and he gives away many of his top ideas daily. But don’t take my word – tune in to some of his Masters in Trading Live broadcasts and decide for yourself.

Want another reason to be long defense – especially drones?

Senior analyst Brian Hunt has you covered.

Regular Digest readers recognize Brian as InvestorPlace’s former CEO. Today, he’s a senior analyst who is in the process of launching a new, free investment newsletter called Money & Megatrends.

Here’s Brian from last week:

Donald Trump wants military spending to go way up, and our advice to own drone stocks is paying off like a broken slot machine. Are you profiting?

Brian has been bullish on drones for a simple reason: after years of innovation, military and surveillance drone makers can now produce effective systems at low cost. They also deliver extremely high cost-to-damage inflicted ratios – something the Russia/Ukraine conflict has made painfully clear.

Brian highlighted two names:

• Kratos (KTOS)
• Ondas (ONDS)

Both have hit fresh all-time highs in recent weeks, and momentum suggests even higher prices are on the way.

On that note, a quick “congratulations” are due for Luke Lango’s Breakout Trader subscribers.

They entered a KTOS trade back in May 2023 – and last week, it crossed the 600% return mark. As I write on Wednesday, it’s up roughly 609%.

While those gains are in the books, if Brian and Jonathan are right, this opportunity may still be in the early innings.

As Brian put it:

The drone megatrend is set to last for many years.

Given its potential to revolutionize war, surveillance, and communication, I believe this uptrend keeps running.

We’ll be making Brian’s new newsletter available soon, and will let you know when it’s ready.

Want to see if KTOS or KRMN are currently in a “green zone” for a trade?

Most investors focus on what to buy.

Far fewer focus on when to buy…even though timing has always mattered just as much.

To help traders with this issue, Keith Kaplan, CEO of our corporate affiliate TradeSmith, and his team of quants began to wrestle with a question:

Do individual stocks exhibit repeatable, calendar-based patterns in when they tend to rise and fall?

After running decades of historical data across thousands of stocks, they found that many names do, in fact, show statistically reliable seasonal windows – periods when they’ve historically delivered outsized gains.

That insight led to the TradeSmith Seasonality Tool, which now tracks seasonal patterns across more than 5,000 stocks, pinpointing historically bullish and bearish windows down to the day.

Here’s what Keith’s team found in backtests:

• 83% win rate
• 857% total growth over 18 years – more than double the S&P 500
• Even in 2007, the worst year tested, trades averaged a 37.9% annualized return

Bottom line: by using historical market data to inform entry and exit timing, investors can stack the odds in their favor – even in choppy or overvalued markets.

Circling back to KTOS

What does the data say about Kratos (KTOS)?

According to the Seasonality Tool, a bullish window opens up between January 29 and February 20, with another strong window coming in May.

Here’s how that looks within the tool.

The Seasonality Tool provides the following pattern statistics for this upcoming January window:

• 80% accuracy rate
• +4.96 average return over this specific window
• +5.89% median return
• +82.24 annualized return

That said, between now and January 29, caution is warranted.

As Luke noted in yesterday’s Breakout Trader issue, KTOS is short-term overbought, with its RSI recently above 80 and its MACD indicator near vertical.

Translation: don’t chase it here.

But zooming out, the big picture hasn’t changed. The defense and drone tailwinds look extremely powerful as we move toward the spring.

Next Tuesday January 20^th at 10 a.m., Keith will “Prediction 2026” where he’ll walk through this Seasonality Tool

He’ll show you exactly how this system works, how the backtests were run, and how investors can apply it today. You can register for the event right here.

When you sign up, you’ll get immediate access to the Seasonality Tool so you can test it on your own stocks before the event.

Bottom line: better data doesn’t guarantee profits – but better timing has always separated average investors from the great ones.

Whether you can join Keith next Tuesday or not, check out KRMN and KTOS today. Both look like money-makers going forward.

Have a good evening,

Jeff Remsburg

The post This Defense Trade Is Up 68% – and the Thesis Is Getting Stronger appeared first on InvestorPlace.

ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½s may look chaotic day to day, but over time they reveal patterns – recurring seasonal rhythms that quietly influence when certain stocks tend to rise or fall. These cycles don’t show up in headlines or earnings reports. They only emerge after decades of data are analyzed at scale.

That’s exactly what our partners at TradeSmith have done.

By uncovering precise seasonal windows across thousands of stocks, they’ve identified moments when probabilities consistently tilt in investors’ favor, regardless of market conditions.

And on Tuesday, January 20, at 10 a.m. Eastern at their Prediction 2026 event, TradeSmith will unveil their biggest financial breakthrough in 21 years: It’s a new way to potentially double your money, by foreseeing the biggest jumps on 5,000 stocks, to the day, with 83% backtested accuracy.

It’s called “green day” investing. At the event, they’ll show you how their Seasonality tool can help you find the best time to buy and sell a stock – down to the day. You can sign up for that event here.

Today, TradeSmith CEO Keith Kaplan is joining us to explain how these patterns work, and how TradeSmith’s new innovation is making market timing more precise than ever.

Take it away Keith…

Human progress didn’t start with better tools. It started with better timing.

Early humans paid close attention to repeating patterns in nature – the length of days, the return of floods, the timing of animal migrations.

Those observations gave rise to the first calendars – sometimes recorded in stone and often anchored to the predictable cycles of the sun, moon, and stars.

This helped early farmers decide when to plant and harvest crops, and helped hunters know when herds would pass through a region.

These cycles didn’t explain why things happened. They explained when things happened. And that knowledge was enough to plan around.

And when it comes to humanity’s long fascination with cycles, few monuments are as widely studied as Stonehenge in southern England.

Stonehenge, a prehistoric monument near Salisbury in southern England

Built about 4,500 years ago in several phases, Stonehenge is among the best-known prehistoric monuments.

One enduring theory about Stonehenge rests on its alignment. Its main axis points toward the sunrise on the summer solstice. That’s led archaeologists to argue that Stonehenge was designed, at least in part, to mark key points in the solar year – signals that would have helped early societies anticipate seasonal change in a world where timing meant survival.

Building a monument like this likely required generations of careful observation, tracking the sun’s annual path using little more than fixed landmarks and sightlines.

Today, we don’t need to build huge stone structures to detect patterns that can help us thrive. We have more detailed data at our disposal and a lot more analytical power to help us put it all together.

At TradeSmith, our mission is to give everyday investors access to the kinds of data and analytics once reserved for hedge funds. That work has led us to uncover a feature of the market that’s often overlooked: seasonality in stock movements.

You can’t see these cycles with the naked eye. They only show up after you run decades of data through powerful algorithms to look for them.

But once you do, a surprising picture emerges.

Thousands of stocks have historically reliable windows – specific times of year when they tend to rise and others when they tend to fall. That includes bull and bear markets, manias and panics, wars, pandemics, and more.

And I’m proud to say that, at TradeSmith, we’ve developed cutting-edge software to track those patterns. We’ve also created a rapid-fire trading strategy based on these signals that can pinpoint bullish seasonality windows on 5,000 stocks – to the day. In our backtests, the system’s trades have won with 83% accuracy.

You can try it yourself right now to see the “green day” for 5,000 different stocks when you register for our Prediction 2026 event , which airs next Tuesday, January 20, at 10 a.m. Eastern.

During that event, we’ll explain exactly how this works, including a new way to apply this secret in a model portfolio that’s turned every $10,000 into $85,700 in our backtests.

Then read on for more on the seasonality phenomenon in markets and how, over the last 15 years, some stocks have followed their seasonality windows with 100% historical accuracy.

Seasonality Affects ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½s, Too

Commodity traders, for example, have long tracked planting and harvest cycles in crops like corn and wheat.

Energy traders watch seasonal demand shifts tied to winter heating and summer cooling.

The gold market has recurring seasonal tendencies, often strengthening during certain parts of the year tied to jewelry demand, central bank buying, and annual festivals in India and China.

And stock investors have studied phenomena like the January Effect for decades. Even Wall Street’s old saying – “Sell in May and go away” – comes from observed seasonal behavior, not theory.

But we’ve discovered that seasonality doesn’t just apply just to commodities and the big stock market index. Every stock has its own seasons to rise or fall – a kind of summer and a kind of winter, too – year after year.

Big-box retailer Target (TGT) provides a good example.

As one of America’s largest retailers, this stock moves with the rhythms of consumer spending throughout the year. But for all the money won – and lost – on Target over the last few years, there’s one certainty…

Between June 22 and July 21, you want to buy the retail bellwether. Target has moved up an average of 5.2% during that summer period, rising 100% of the time over the past 15 years:

That’s 15 years of summertime price spikes, starting long before it fell under the pandemic-era spotlight. And in 2025, the pattern held true: Target rose 10.3% during its 29-day seasonally bullish window.

The chart you’re seeing above is from one of the breakthrough innovations from TradeSmith’s team of researchers, software engineers, and quant investors: our ground-breaking Trade Cycles Seasonality tool.

It’s an easy-to-use tool that can take one of thousands of commonly traded stocks, analyze its movements, and point out its strongest seasonality trends – with starting periods narrowed down to the day.

Here’s another example of a strong seasonality pattern, this time in Home Depot (HD):

Over the last 15 years, between June 15 to July 27, Home Depot’s share price has risen 93% of the time, with an average return of 4.7%.

And in 2025, the pattern held true again. It rose from $349.31 on June 16 to $372.69 on July 28 – a 6.7% gain in a just over a month.

A Powerful New System for Seasonal Profits

Target and Home Depot are just two examples among many others.

Our development team has fine-tuned this tool to uncover seasonality cycles in stocks, stock market indexes like the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, as well as in currencies and commodities.

By crunching the data and compiling the historical movements of thousands of different assets and running 50,000 tests a day to analyze every stock in the major indexes, we’ve built a new system to help predict the biggest jumps on 5,000 stocks.

Over our 18-year backtest, these seasonal trades delivered 857% in total growth. That’s more than twice what the S&P 500 delivered over the same time.

Even in 2007, the worst year in our testing, we saw an average gain of 2.5% and an annualized return of 37.9%. That’s close to four times the average annual gain of the S&P 500.

The question now: How can we make this powerful system work for you?

The Power of Seasonality Is Now in Your Hands

Go here to register for access to an “unlocked” version TradeSmith’s ground-breaking Seasonality tool.

Then you can explore the results of our powerful research for the stocks you own or are thinking of buying. It’s available online until next Monday, January 19.

Then on Tuesday, January 20, at 10 a.m. Eastern during our Prediction 2026 webinar , I’ll show you how our Seasonality tool can help you find the best time to buy and sell a stock – down to the day.

And as we start the New Year, a new batch of these seasonal cycles is about to kick off…

And we’ll be sharing unfiltered access to the Seasonality tool and the top seasonal recommendations this year as part of our Trade Cycles trading advisory.

Go here now to register for the event – and give TradeSmith’s Seasonality tool a try, free of charge, before the big event.

I hope to see you there!

Keith Kaplan
CEO, TradeSmith

The post How to Find the Best Days to Buy — Down to the Date appeared first on InvestorPlace.

On one side are those who understand – and they are minting money at a rate that defies logic. On the other? Complete financial annihilation. 

Right now, 1,000 new millionaires are created in America every single day. That’s more than one every other minute. 

Meanwhile, the bottom 50% of Americans now hold just 2.5% of the nation’s wealth – down from 4% in 1990. The wealth gap between the top 10% and everyone else has reached its widest point since the 1920s. 

The economic middle ground is shrinking fast. 

It’s a terrifying reality. How can it be a ‘wonderful’ thing? 

Because now the path to generating 20X returns in the financial markets isn’t reserved for the venture capitalists on Sand Hill Road. It’s open to all.

This ‘hyperscale secret’ is what separates the billionaires from the bankrupt. And it’s the key to turning terrifying into wonderful.

Let me show you what I mean.

How Linear Thinking Is Destroying Your Wealth

After seeing that figure about the creation of millionaires in America, there was probably one thought on your mind… 

Why aren’t I one of them?

It’s not because you aren’t smart or because you don’t work hard.

It’s because you are likely betting on the “Old Economy,” using linear thinking in an exponential world. But, of course, that’s how human beings are wired. 

If you take 30 linear steps, you end up 30 steps away from where you started. 

Technology, however, does not care about biology. It progresses exponentially. If you take 30 exponential steps (1, 2, 4, 8, 16…), you don’t end up at 30. You end up at 1 billion. 

This is due to “The Law of Accelerating Returns.” And it’s why it feels like the world is spinning off its axis.

Moore’s Law on Steroids: When Technology Compounds Exponentially

In 1975, the first digital camera cost $10,000, weighed eight pounds, and captured 0.01 megapixels. Today, the camera in your phone is thousands of times more powerful and costs mere dollars to produce.

The acceleration isn’t just in quality – it’s in adoption speed:

• The telephone took 75 years to reach 50 million users
• The internet took seven years to reach 50 million users
• Facebook took three years to reach 50 million users
• ChatGPT took just two months to reach 100 million users

Do you see the compression? The timelines are collapsing.

It took IBM (IBM) 42 years to become a billion-dollar company. Alphabet (GOOGL) did it in eight. Jet.com did it in just four months.

The rate at which companies are growing – and the rate at which wealth is being generated – is accelerating. Instead of years or quarters, we’re measuring growth in days. For example, Netflix (NFLX) made its most recent billion dollars in just 31 days. And Apple did it in less than two.

So, if you are holding stocks that grow at 6% a year because “slow and steady wins the race,” you are being lapped by a Ferrari while riding a bicycle.

Why Half of Today’s Fortune 500 Will Be Dead by 2035

Now, I mentioned earlier that the world is ripping in two. This isn’t hyperbole. While AI and exponential tech are minting millionaires, they are also obliterating industries that don’t adapt.

Remember Blockbuster? In 2004, the company was raking in $6 billion in revenue. By 2010, it was bankrupt, utterly annihilated by Netflix.

Look at the taxi industry. For decades, a taxi medallion was a golden ticket… until Uber (UBER) and Lyft (LYFT) arrived, and the industry was devastated.

Then there’s retail. Amazon didn’t just compete with stores like Kmart, Sears, Circuit City, and Borders; it made them irrelevant.

This is the “dark side” of exponential progress. If you are invested in “Old School” companies – the ones with heavy debt, physical inventory, and linear growth models – you are standing on the tracks while the AI train barrels down on you.

According to a September 2025 survey by Resume.org, 1 in 4 companies has already replaced workers with AI. And it’s expected that by the end of 2026, nearly 40% of companies will. This trend is not reversible. You cannot put the genie back in the bottle.

We now face a binary choice: make money, or become a statistic.

What Makes a Company Hyperscalable? The Zero-Friction Formula

So, how do you ensure you’re on the winning side and find the companies that can go from a garage to a trillion-dollar valuation?

You need to look for a specific type of business. I call them Hyperscale opportunities.

And here is the secret that sounds completely insane until you look at the data: Many of the best businesses in the world today don’t make anything.

They don’t manufacture steel, build cars, or drill for oil. Those are “high friction” businesses that require factories, massive labor forces, and expensive supply chains.

Hyperscale companies deal in information and data.

Think about it.

• Uber is the world’s largest transportation service, but it owns no vehicles.
• Airbnb (ABNB) is the world’s largest rental company, but it owns no real estate.
• Meta (META) is the world’s largest media owner, but it creates no content.

These companies built a platform once –  and adding new customers afterward costs them virtually nothing. 

That is hyperscalability. It allows for profit margins that manufacturing companies could only dream of.

Case Studies In Disruption

Let me give you some concrete examples. Take Shopify (SHOP), a platform that helps people set up online stores. It doesn’t sell the products; it just provides the code. In 2015, the firm had 162,000 businesses on its platform. By 2025, it reached 5.5 million.

Because Shopify deals in software, not physical goods, it could handle that explosive growth without exorbitant overhead costs. It went from a $1.2 billion company to an $87 billion giant. And I recommended that stock most of the way. Investors who followed my recommendation on Shopify saw gains as high as 17-fold, turning a $5,000 investment into $85,000.

Then there’s Paycom (PAYC), maker of payroll software. Sounds boring, right? Wrong. Once the software is written, the company can sell it over and over again at minimal cost. That’s why Paycom’s market value has increased nearly 11-fold since 2014.

Or look at Copart (CPRT), which runs car auctions. But it doesn’t just possess a lot; it invented a virtual auction technology called VB3. The company sits back and rakes in service fees on over 1 million car sales a year. The result? Copart shares have soared 26-fold since their IPO in ’94.

I wanted to prove this thesis, so I created an index tracking 15 companies with true hyperscale business models – firms like Shopify, Paycom, and Copart that can add customers at virtually zero marginal cost.

This “Hyperscale 15” index delivered returns over 7X greater than the S&P 500 over the past decade. A $10,000 investment in these companies would have grown to over $70,000.

But here’s what keeps me up at night – and what should excite you…

AI is hyperscalability on steroids.

These earlier hyperscale companies still required human customer service, sales, and operations teams. AI eliminates even those costs. Once the model is trained, serving one customer or 1 million customers costs nearly the same.

This is why AI startups are reaching billion-dollar valuations in months, not years. And why the next wave of 20X, 50X, even 100X returns will come from AI-powered hyperscale businesses that haven’t even gone public yet.

The Hyperscale Investment Thesis: How to Spot 100X Returns

Shopify is a fantastic opportunity. But it is just one.

I have identified seven AI Hyperscale startups that are ready to change the world and could run like Shopify did from 2015 to 2025.

• One is an AI robotics company that Amazon, Walmart (WMT), and Softbank (SFTBY) are all backing to automate warehouses.
• One is a data science firm that is, as far as I can tell, the best in the world at applying AI to data analytics – the “oil” of the 21st century.
• Another is building the “railways” for future AI computing power and is backed by Nvidia (NVDA).

These companies are small. They are hyperscalable. And they are moving fast…

Because we are witnessing the inflection point of technology.

Once we develop machines that can truly think and learn for themselves, that is it. As AI systems become increasingly capable, the companies that dominate this era will control the future. And the investors who back them will control the wealth.

Fifty percent of the Fortune 500 companies we see today will be dead in 10 years, replaced by startups you haven’t heard of yet.

I want you to hear about those up-and-comers first.

My latest video presentation goes into much deeper detail about the Law of Accelerating Returns, the Hyperscale 15 Index, and exactly how to position yourself for this massive wealth transfer.

In this presentation, I pull back the curtain on:

If you are tired of single-digit returns and watching other people get rich on the news you read six months too late… then you need to watch this.

Don’t let “linear thinking” cost you your financial future.

Click here to watch the full presentation and harness that hyperscale momentum.

The post The Hyperscale Advantage: Finding the Next Shopify Before Wall Street Does appeared first on InvestorPlace.

After years of market anxiety driven by war, instability and constant geopolitical tension, imagine a stretch of time where the headlines begin to feel… different.

Not perfect. Just calmer.

A grinding war edges toward resolution. Long-standing pressure points begin to loosen.

Investors wake up one morning and realize they are no longer bracing for the next shock. They are starting to expect things to improve.

That kind of shift is not just economic. It is psychological. And as I’ll explain in a moment, it also matters for markets.

In last Thursday’s ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ 360, I walked you through the stunning developments in Venezuela and why they mattered for markets.

What stood out most was not just the event itself, but how quickly a long-frozen situation suddenly moved. One moment, investors treated Venezuela as background noise. The next, it became a reminder that entrenched geopolitical realities can change faster than anyone expects.

Now step back and ask a bigger question. What if Venezuela was not an isolated shock, but the first domino?

For the past few months, I’ve been telling my readers that there is a very real possibility of a “peace dividend” breaking out in much of the world in 2026.

See, when peace breaks out, it’s a big deal. And it’s not just about lowering defense budgets or raising growth forecasts among the countries involved. It’s more about mindset.

When fear fades, people do not just feel better. They take more risk. They stop preparing for disruption. They spend more, they build businesses.

The economic consequences of a peace dividend can be profound.

So, in today’s ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ 360, I want to walk you through why the world may be entering one of those moments right now. We will briefly look at why what happened in Venezuela could be just a prelude. I also want to highlight two other major geopolitical developments that could reinforce this change narrative. And finally, I will explain why understanding periods of rapid change is critical for navigating what comes next in the markets.

Venezuelan President Captured in Surprise Attack

As I mentioned last week, the U.S. military conducted a surprise operation in Venezuela, apprehending Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. In the aftermath, power shifted to Delcy Rodríguez, who has since been sworn in as Venezuela’s new president.

While Rodríguez initially condemned the Trump administration’s actions, her tone has since shifted. She has stated that she intends to pursue “balanced and respectful international relations between the United States and Venezuela.”

The broader implication is not just political – it’s also economic.

The U.S. move is closely tied to stabilizing Venezuela’s energy sector and encouraging foreign investment. Major U.S. energy companies, including Chevron Corporation (CVX), are expected to play a role in repairing Venezuela’s energy infrastructure and production, with billions of dollars likely to be directed toward rebuilding efforts.

As I mentioned previously, the more important takeaway for investors is speed. A situation that appeared frozen for years suddenly moved. And markets were forced to reprice expectations almost overnight.

This won’t be the last geopolitical shift we see this year. In fact, two big developments could happen relatively soon…

President Trump Meets with Ukraine’s President

Earlier this month, President Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at Mar-a-Lago to discuss a potential framework for ending the war with Russia. The key takeaway from this meeting was the U.S. offering a security guarantee of up to 15 years at the end of the war.

Shortly thereafter, at a summit in Paris, Ukraine’s European allies committed to additional security measures aimed at deterring further attacks on Ukraine. The U.K. and France went further, indicating they would be willing to deploy troops to Ukraine following a ceasefire agreement in order to maintain peace.

In the meantime, Russia extended its ban on gasoline exports through February in order to conserve fuel for domestic supplies. This ban also includes diesel, marine fuel and other refined products that have been impacted by the fighting with Ukraine.

If there is an incentive for Russia to end the fighting with Ukraine, Russia’s domestic energy infrastructure is likely a big one.

To be clear, I’m not saying that I’m predicting an end to the conflict. But the potential is there, and it can happen faster than you expect.

Overall, a ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia would alleviate a significant amount of uncertainty, and the stock market should experience a relief rally. In fact, even the possibility of that outcome can influence market behavior well before anything is finalized.

Large Protests Persist in Iran

Large anti-government protests continue to spread across Iran, driven by its deteriorating currency and the oppression of its citizens. Protests have occurred in more than 220 locations in 26 of Iran’s 31 provinces.

The word “azadi,” the Farsi word for freedom, is being chanted during demonstrations. The Iranian protests have been in several major cities, including the holy city of Qom, where the mullahs’ political strength is based.

Iran is currently led by the mullahs, but they could eventually be ousted by their outraged citizens, who are dealing with a collapsing currency and an acute water shortage in Tehran.  So, these large protests could result in a leadership change, which would be a welcome development given that Iran’s President recently stated that the country was at war with Europe, Israel and the U.S.

Since Iran’s mullahs are a big sponsor of terrorism, especially against Israel, the world would be a safer place if they were no longer in charge of Iran.

It is worth pausing here to think about how quickly assumptions can change. You can still Google photographs of Iran before the Islamic Revolution. They show a very different country. Modern cities. Universities filled with young people. Men and women wearing modern clothing.

A society that looked stable and familiar to the outside world.

Sure, tensions were simmering underneath the surface. But suddenly, everything changed overnight. And it happened a lot faster than most expected.

What These Shifts Signal for Investors

That is how geopolitical transitions often work.

Despite all the distractions and international shocks, markets have remained resilient to start the year.

But think about the possibilities for a moment. A world in which the Russia-Ukraine conflict ends?

And what about Iran? If the current regime falls, it’s anyone’s guess what’s next. But the possibilities are intriguing…

Bottom line, I think 2026 could be a year where the “peace dividend” idea takes hold. 

At first glance, that may seem reassuring as an investor – and it is. A more peaceful world is a more prosperous world. 

But as the global landscape begins to shift – with uncertainty easing – what matters most isn’t how the market looks on the surface. It’s what’s happening underneath…

That’s why I’ve been telling my followers about a dramatic “hidden” shift taking place in the markets right now.

Right now, we’re starting to see capital start moving more selectively. Some stocks continue to attract attention, build momentum and benefit from improving conditions. But others are already seeing their fundamentals begin to weaken.

In fact, I’m predicting that many of yesterday’s winners could “crash.”

Not with a sudden selloff. Not with a dramatic headline. But they could suffer through long stretches where they go nowhere – or steadily decline.

Meanwhile, a group of smaller stocks will continue to move higher – and become the new leaders.

This is where many investors get caught off guard.

Because by the time this shift becomes apparent to the public, it will already be too late.

I recently put together a special briefing on this very issue. I explain what investors can do to avoid getting stuck on the wrong side of the next market phase – and about the stocks I’m targeting to become the market’s next leaders.

I strongly encourage you to watch it now, because understanding this shift – before it fully unfolds – can make all the difference in how your portfolio performs from here.

Sincerely,

Louis Navellier

Editor, ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ 360

The Editor hereby discloses that as of the date of this email, the Editor, directly or indirectly, owns the following securities that are the subject of the commentary, analysis, opinions, advice, or recommendations in, or which are otherwise mentioned in, the essay set forth below:

Chevron Corporation (CVX)

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This morning, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) landed right in the bulls’ sweet spot.

No upside surprise… no ugly reacceleration… just in-line – and in some cases – below forecasted numbers that build confidence and keep the Federal Reserve on an expected path.

Here’s what the report showed:

• Headline CPI rose 0.3% on the month and 2.7% year-over-year – both as forecasted – confirming that inflation is not reigniting in runaway fashion.
• Core CPI, which strips out volatile food and energy prices and is the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, increased 0.2% monthly and 2.6% annually – both were 0.1 percentage point below expectations.

Yes, the overall inflation rate remains above the Fed’s 2.0% target, but these are good numbers. They make a reasonable case that the pace of price increases is, at worst, not soaring, and, at best, slowly moving back to target as hoped.

So, what will this mean for the Fed’s interest rate policy now and as we head toward the spring?

With inflation running in line with forecasts, the Federal Reserve has little incentive to change course in the near term.

The Fed’s next FOMC meeting concludes on Wednesday, January 28, and today’s inflation report all but locks in the “wait-and-see” approach that Fed Chair Powell spoke to last month.

Fed members can point to today’s steady inflation numbers, as well as our economy that’s gradually cooling, though not falling off a cliff (remember, last week, the unemployment rate fell to 4.4% from 4.5%). These data points give the Fed cover to stay patient.

In fact, as I write on Tuesday, the CME Group’s FedWatch Tool puts 97.2% odds on the Fed holding rates steady in January.

However, looking further ahead, the focus shifts from whether rates will be cut to when. According to the FedWatch Tool, June is the first meeting when traders assign majority odds to at least a quarter-point cut.

As you can see below, markets are pricing 47% odds of a single 25-basis-point cut by then – with more than 20% probability of 50 basis points or more.

Source: CME Group

That timing fits a Fed that wants additional confirmation inflation is sustainably under control – and more clarity on how much the labor market is actually slowing.

It’s also in line with what legendary investor Louis Navellier expects

Last week, Louis unveiled five predictions for 2026.

Let’s jump to his forecast for rate cuts:

I expect at least two additional interest rate cuts in 2026.

Now, Louis’ prediction did come with an asterisk…

For these two cuts to materialize, Director of the National Economic Council Kevin Hassett must be confirmed as the next Fed Chair.

This outcome isn’t guaranteed.

As we’ve covered in the Digest, the race to replace Jerome Powell has become about far more than rate policy. It’s about credibility, independence, and optics – especially amid growing chatter that President Trump could jeopardize the Fed’s autonomy by installing a loyalist.

That fear has been a recurring theme in financial media: markets don’t want a “puppet chair,” and lawmakers certainly don’t want to confirm one.

And this brings us to the horserace between Hassett and former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh.

Becoming the next Fed Chair requires a tightrope walk

The candidate must successfully convince President Trump that he’ll deliver the rate cuts that Trump wants (to get the nomination) – while convincing markets and Congress that the Fed’s independence will remain intact (to get through the Congressional confirmation process).

In December, Warsh briefly surged ahead because he was viewed as the more “institutionalist” choice. The assumption was that Trump would pick him because he’d have an easier time getting the Congressional nod.

But Hassett quickly adjusted his messaging, offering up what confirmation-minded lawmakers wanted to hear:

The Federal Reserve’s independence is really, really important, and the voices of the other people at the [Federal Open ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ Committee], they’re important, too…

The idea that someone isn’t qualified for the job because they are a close friend who’s worked well with the president is something that I think the President rejects.

As recently as yesterday, the predictions platform Kalshi had Hassett in the lead at 44% to Warsh’s 37%.

But as I write on Tuesday, those odds have flipped. Warsh is back on top to receive Trump’s nomination at 39% compared to Hassett’s odds at 33%.

Below, I’ve circled how these odds have shifted since early December – now a toss-up.

Louis believes Hassett will eventually be the next Fed Chair due to his ability to walk this tightrope:

Publicly, Hassett has emphasized his independence, telling The Wall Street Journal he would rely on his own judgment and not bow to political pressure when setting interest rates – language that’s all but required to secure confirmation.

At the same time, Hassett has made clear there is “plenty of room” to cut rates in the months ahead, aligning with President Trump’s view that lower rates are needed to support housing and other interest-sensitive sectors of the economy.

We’ll see.

As we highlighted in yesterday’s Digest, the Justice Department has reportedly opened an investigation into Chair Powell, tied to potential inconsistencies in testimony about expenses associated with the Fed’s headquarters renovation. In response – based on concerns around the Fed’s independence – Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) has said he would block any future Trump Fed nominees until the issue is resolved.

So, for now, whoever Trump picks faces headwinds.

Lots of moving parts here, but at a minimum, we can say that today’s inflation data isn’t a massive headwind for more cuts.

Switching gears to a market warning sign – and what to do about it

My friend Meb Faber of Cambria Investment Management is a respected quant analyst. Like Louis, he relies on historical data and trading algorithms to inform his market moves.

Yesterday, he posted a market warning related to the CAPE Ratio, which stands for Cyclically Adjusted Price-to-Earnings ratio. It’s basically your standard P/E ratio except it uses the 10-year average of inflation-adjusted earnings to smooth out booms & busts.

It’s not a precise market timing tool, but it is very instructive as a predictor of broad returns when based on a multi-year timeframe.

Here’s Meb:

The US CAPE ratio ended the year at 40.

Historical average 10-year real returns when CAPE > 40 across all counties = negative.

Never once has a country’s stock market ended the year above 40 and met the historical 10-year real return average.

This is exactly what Louis has been warning about here in 2026.

When valuations stretch this far, the risk isn’t always a dramatic crash. Many times, it’s something quieter – yet very dangerous.

Louis calls it a “Hidden Crash.”

Historically, when markets become dominated by a narrow group of mega-cap leaders, returns don’t necessarily collapse – they stall and just move sideways over long periods.

That’s what happened during the so-called “Lost Decade” from 2000 to 2009.

That framing lines up with Meb’s CAPE warning. When valuations are elevated and leadership narrows, long-term, buy-and-hold expectations deteriorate, even if prices don’t suffer a knife-edge crash.

Last week, Louis released a market briefing detailing the defensive action steps he’s taking today. If you’re still invested in many of the high-valuation market darlings that have done great over the last two years, I encourage you to check it right here.

Meanwhile, to play offense against a Lost Decade, there’s the Seasonality Tool from our corporate partner TradeSmith

TradeSmith is one of the most respected quant shops in our industry. They’ve spent over $20 million and over 11,000 man-hours developing their market analysis algorithms with dozens of staff working solely on developing and maintaining their software and data systems.

Today, instead of asking, “Is the market expensive?” they’re asking a different question:

Can I find stocks that history suggests are poised to surge, regardless of the broad market’s valuation backdrop?

According to TradeSmith’s CEO Keith Kaplan, the answer is “yes.” Here he is explaining:

Thousands of stocks have historically reliable windows – specific calendar days of each year – when they tend to rise and others when they tend to fall. That includes bull and bear markets, manias and panics, wars, pandemics, and more.

I’m proud to say that, at TradeSmith, we’ve built cutting-edge software to track those patterns.

We’ve also created a rapid-fire trading strategy based on these signals that can pinpoint bullish seasonality windows on 5,000 stocks – to the day. In our backtests, the system’s trades have won with 83% accuracy.

If we are entering a Lost Decade-style environment, shifting from a “buy-and-hold” market approach to a selective, “sniper” strategy could make all the difference to your portfolio.

On Tuesday, January 20, at 10 a.m. Eastern at the Prediction 2026 event, Keith will walk through all the details of the Seasonality Tool and show you exactly how it works.

But if you don’t want to wait, you don’t have to.

You can try it right now on over 5,000 different stocks. All you need to do is register for Tuesday’s event and you’ll get immediate access to the “unlocked” version of this Seasonality Tool.

So, play around with it, then join Keith next Tuesday for a walk through all the bells and whistles.

Putting it all together…

Inflation is behaving, and the Fed appears to be on a path toward potential rate cuts this summer.

At the same time, history shows that markets at today’s valuation levels face significant long-term headwinds – and added uncertainty around the next Fed Chair could introduce unexpected volatility in the near term.

That combination sets the stage for a stock picker’s market where a selective, sniper-style approach is likely to outperform broad index strategies.

Bottom line: staying nimble and opportunistic may be the difference between merely treading water in 2026 and making real progress toward your financial goals.

Have a good evening,

Jeff Remsburg

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